






































KSS 

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Shook the Rein That Hung Loosely Along the Back of the 
Reindeer. [P. 30] 


BIOGRAPHY OF 
A REINDEER 


BY 



AUTHOR OF 


SHAGGYCOAT 

THE BIOGRAPHY OFA BEAVER 
BLACK BRUIM 

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAR 
THE WILDERNESS DOG 

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A GRAY WOLF 
THE TRAIL OF THE WOODS etc. 
ILLUSTRATED BY 

CHARLES COPELAND 



PUBLISHED BY 

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



COPTBIGHT, 1915, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Published October, 1915 


THE QUINN A BODEN CO. PRESS 



OCT 25 1915 

©Cl. A4 14231 



DEDICATED 


To my friend, the Bird Woman, Gene Stratton Porter. As a 
slight recognition of the great service she has rendered the 
English-speaking people through her beautiful books, in which 
she has so happily blended nature and human nature. 

















CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction. Kris Kringle’s Horned Horse . 3 

I A Race with Death 17 

II Little Lightfoot 47 

III The Home of the Reindeer 69 

IV The Cruise of the “ Bear ” 91 

V Barren for Tundra 112 

VI The Rescue of the Four Hundred .125 

VII Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat! .... 145 

VIII The Lure of the Gold Trail 158 

IX A Circle of Eyes 183 

X The Great Race 212 

XI Again the Cry for Meat 240 

XII Farewell, Old Starbuck 263 





Shook the rein that hung loosely along the back 
of the reindeer Frontispiece 

The long coarse hair upon the fawn’s neck stood up, 

AND FEAR SENT A SHIVER THROUGH HIM 


PAGE 

54 


He picked up a fagot which was burning at one end 

AND SENT IT HISSING AND SPUTTERING INTO THEIR 
MIDST 198 


Alec clutched at the edge of the ice to keep the 
sledge from sinking 

























V • 











































V 


/ 









KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 


Breathes there a man among us with soul 
so dead that he does not often, when the Yule- 
tide season comes round, recall with boyish 
delight the good old days when he firmly be- 
lieved in a real Santa Claus and, best of all, 
in the reindeer and sledge piled high with the 
bulging pack. 

The cut-and-dried spirit that has fallen upon 
this age has done few more questionable 
things than the attempt to rob the old world 
of that ancient myth, dearest of all to the heart 
of childhood, Our Santa Claus. He so warmed 
our hearts, and kindled our imagination. Then, 
too, we so gradually came to know that Father 
and Mother were the real Santa Claus that I 
fail to see the harm of the dear old myth, while 
its good I know is enormous, carrying in its 


4 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

very spirit as it does the Christ idea of giving 
and doing good. 

What pictures of childhood more delighted 
us than those of the fat, rosy-cheeked old gen- 
tleman, muffled and fur-coated, with benevo- 
lence radiating from every portion of his fat 
person. But even more interesting than the 
man, if possible, was the wonderful reindeer, 
with his fantastic branching antlers, his long, 
warm-looking coat, that could well withstand 
the bitter cold of that polar country which was 
supposed to be the home of the dear old Saint. 
How sleek and dainty was the reindeer’s nose, 
and how bright and spirited his eyes ; hut most 
suggestive of all the many wonderful things 
about this remarkable horse was the cloud of 
steam that jetted from his nostrils, suggesting 
the very cold weather. 

To the childish mind how much depended 
upon the reindeer. Would he be able to haul 
the heavy sledge, with its bulging packs, 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 5 


through the deep drifts? Was there any pos- 
sibility that they might become stalled in a 
bad storm and the wonderful day be lost? 

These and a dozen other childish impressions 
come back to me as I write, and I am sure that 
my own childhood would have been robbed of a 
lot of its indescribable charm, its fancy, and 
its wonder-pictures had I been told, as soon as 
I was old enough to comprehend the statement, 
that there was no Santa Claus and no reindeer. 

Christmas without Santa Claus for the 
young people, the real mythical Santa Claus, 
with reindeer and sledge, is a very tame affair. 

But even if scoffers partly destroy the ro- 
tund old Gentleman, his reindeer still re- 
mains more widely used and of more impor- 
tance to-day than ever before, and it is of that 
splendid comrade of Santa Claus, his Horned 
Horse, that I am going to tell you. 

It will probably surprise my readers consid- 
erably to learn that there are over thirty thou- 


6 


KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


sand reindeer in their domesticated state right 
here in North America. All but a few dozen 
of them which are owned by that splendid 
philanthropist, Doctor Grenfell, of Labrador, 
are found in Uncle Sam’s dominion of Alaska, 
to which rugged country the first small herd 
was imported from Siberia in 1892 by the edu- 
cator, Dr. Sheldon Jackson. 

As for the wild reindeer, or caribou, in North 
America, he is nearly as countless as the stars. 
A few years ago the naturalist, Mr. Thompson 
Seton, went away up beyond Athabaska into 
the Canadian barren-ground country beyond 
the timber-line. In this desolate land, which 
seems to be the natural home of the caribou in 
America, he found them in such numbers he 
thought they were as numerous as the buffalo 
had ever been on this continent. One herd that 
he discovered he estimated as containing mil- 
lions of head. 

Extending clear around the earth and just 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 7 


above the timber-line and stretching away to 
the snow-line is the barren-ground country, the 
home of the barren-ground caribou. This is a 
cheerless waste, where only the smallest wil- 
lows and birches grow, and where the summer 
is of the shortest. The woodland caribou, which 
is considerably larger than its barren-ground 
kinsman, ranges much further south than does 
the barren-ground, having been known to stray 
down into northern Maine. 

The home of the domesticated European rein- 
deer, where it runs in a wild as well as domesti- 
cated state, is Norway, Sweden, and Finland, 
and in the islands of Nova Zembla and Spitz- 
bergen. 

The subduing genius of the reindeer, the peo- 
ple who have done the most with him, and gotten 
the most out of him, are the Lapps, a primitive 
people living in a rugged country known as 
Lapland, which means ‘ 4 land’s end.” So the 
name Lapp is indiscriminately applied to many 


8 


KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


of the people in that desolate land fringing the 
Arctic Sea in northern Europe and Asia. 

The caribou or reindeer in his wild state 
weighs from one hundred and thirty to one hun- 
dred and fifty pounds for the barren-ground 
species and two hundred and fifty pounds to 
three hundred for the woodland species, but in 
captivity, by careful breeding, some larger spec- 
imens have been obtained. Not much of a horse 
for size, you may think. But he makes up in 
endurance and in strength what he lacks in 
actual weight, for he will draw more than his 
own weight over the snow at a pace that in 
the end would leave a good horse far behind, 
and keep it up for a day or two if required. 
All writers agree that the reindeer is a steed 
that practically never tires, while some of the 
records of his endurance seem unbelievable. 

To the Lapp he is not only a fine horse, when 
hitched to the pulk, but also a beast of burden, 
being used as a pack animal, and likewise some- 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 9 


times ridden in the saddle, although he is rather 
small for that purpose. 

The wealth of the Lapps is computed by the 
number of reindeer in their herds. There are a 
few very rich men among them, owning herds 
containing several thousand, but most own a 
few hundred, while the very poor Lapps only 
possess a few head. 

Not only is the reindeer the Lapp’s faithful 
steed, but he is also food and raiment as well, 
while the tender reindeer tongue, which is con- 
sidered a great luxury in Europe, gives the 
primitive Lapp an export trade that makes him 
a citizen of the world. 

The reindeer skin, which is soft and pliable, 
is covered with a thick hair from one and a 
half to three inches in length, so it makes the 
warmest kind of robes. Clothing, blankets, and 
everything that more civilized people use cloth 
for are here supplied by the reindeer’s useful 
skin. His antlers are made into spoons, ladles, 


10 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and many other utensils. His sinews, which are 
very strong, form the stoutest kind of cord, 
while his hoofs and many other parts find their 
use in the hands of the ingenious Lapp. 

His flesh, pounded up and mixed with one- 
third fat, forms a prepared meat that is a 
standard article of diet among the Lapps. It 
will keep for a long time when so prepared, and 
it is admirably suited to the cold climate. 

When the reindeer is killed, the partly di- 
gested moss in the stomach is taken out and 
mixed with some wild berries and made into a 
pudding which is considered the greatest luxury 
among this primitive people, where luxuries 
are not a matter of every-day diet. 

The milk of this useful deer is very thick, 
like cream, but rather aromatic in taste. It has 
to be diluted two or three times before it is 
suitable to drink. When coagulated, cheese is 
made from it, while the whey is drunk greedily 
by the Lapp. The milk is also fermented, and 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 11 


a liquor similar to the drink made by the Tar- 
tars from mare’s milk is produced. 

In color the reindeer or caribou is far re- 
moved from the sleek, rich, reddish-brown crea- 
tures that we see represented in the Santa Claus 
pictures. Its prevailing color is gray, very 
slightly tinged with brown, but so slightly col- 
ored as to look almost white at a little distance. 
The markings are a white ring around the tip 
of the nose and a corresponding ring about each 
ankle just above the hoof. When the coat is 
first shed the color is much darker, but as soon 
as the new hair comes in it grows gray again. 
The hair is not shed at the root as in other ani- 
mals of the kind, but breaks off close to the skin. 
The fawn is reddish-brown when dropped, but 
after six or eight months puts on the adult- 
gray. 

The horns of the reindeer are most curious, 
being cylindrical at the base, but branching both 
backward and down. Only one side of the set, 


12 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


however, puts out brow antlers. The length of 
the brow antlers is nearly that of the head, while 
the other branches writhe and twist about, giv- 
ing this remarkable deer’s head a very fantastic 
appearance. 

The more primitive harness is a simple collar 
with a single tug passing between the animal ’s 
legs to the front end of the sledge, while the 
steed is driven by a single rein, this being 
passed from side to side as the driver wishes the 
animal to go to the right or left. The rein is 
secured to the antlers. This mode of driving is 
quite similar to the gee-line with which a six- 
mule team is sometimes driven. 

The horns of the buck are shed in November 
instead of in February, as in the case of most 
other deer. The hind does not shed her horns 
until April, provided she is with young, but if 
she is barren they fall in September. This 
enables the herdsman to know which hind to 
kill for meat and which not. 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 13 


Of all the deer family, the reindeer or cari- 
bou is the most restless and given to fitful mi- 
grations. Several of the North American 
Indian names for him mean “ The Wanderer 
and who has named the wild creatures as fit- 
tingly as the Indian! 

Like a gray shadow he blends with the land- 
scape, being nearly invisible against the new 
snow, and also blending nicely in the gray, color- 
less, barren ground above the timber-line, be- 
tween that and the snow-line. 

To-day he pulls the fantastic reindeer moss 
from rocks, or paws and roots for it beneath 
the snow, in one parallel of north latitude; 
and to-morrow he may be feeding a hundred 
miles away. 

When upon these autumn migrations — al- 
though the caribou is always wandering — they 
band together in herds of hundreds of thou- 
sands, and rush across the barrens like a mighty 
tidal-wave. At such times they are perfectly 


11 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


fearless of man, and entirely fearless of fire- 
arms. 

With rattling antlers and cracking ankle- 
joints, and hoofs snapping like castanets, with 
steam pouring from their nostrils, and a cloud 
of vapor rising from the mighty herd, they 
sweep over the barren north lands, the mighty 
phalanx of Santa Claus ’s horned horse. 

Sometimes, when they have gone for months 
without finding any suitable supply of salt, they 
become locoed and frenzied with the smell of the 
salt water from Hudson’s Bay, which they scent 
many leagues away. Then the migration, which 
is usually rather leisurely, becomes a mad rush 
for the salt shores — a stampede in which all 
things are swept before it, and many sometimes 
perish in a ravine or muskeg. 

Of the endurance of the reindeer when driven, 
all writers agree. 

Two army officers in the seventeenth century, 
while making a rapid trip northward for the 


KRIS KRINGLE’S HORNED HORSE 15 


government of Sweden, drove a reindeer for 
several hours at the rate of eighteen miles an 
hour. Many of the figures which I find in 
seemingly trustworthy authorities I dare not 
quote, but it is certain that a good reindeer 
would kill three or four horses in a relay race, 
running against them all, and still be fresh. 

The most extravagant account of all concern- 
ing the speed of this remarkable Horned Horse 
is found in Scandinavian history. At a certain 
time of revolution and unrest in the kingdom a 
plot to overthrow the government was discov- 
ered by an officer, who at the time was eight 
hundred miles from his King and the capital. 
If he could reach the capital in just two days, 
the government might be saved. His only hope 
of reaching his King in time lay in the fleetest 
and most wonderful reindeer in Norway. Upon 
this slight hope and with the destiny of the 
nation in his hands, the officer set out. For 
forty-eight hours, without stopping for a mo- 


10 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ment, the noble deer carried the frantic officer, 
and came to the King with the life-and-death 
news of treason. But when the terrible race 
was over the faithful reindeer fell dead. 

A wonderful picture of the reindeer still 
hangs in the palace at Drontheim. 

I give you the story as I got it from the pages 
of history — but to me it looks incredible. 
Man, when great emergency calls him, and life 
and death hang in the balance, can make these 
superhuman efforts, and pay for it with his life ; 
but that an animal, a mere brute, without under- 
standing the mighty thing at stake, could make 
such a sacrifice argues a nobility of wonderful 
quality. It also suggests a faith in the hand of 
the master that drove it so cruelly, that puts 
our own faith in the power above us to shame. 

After all, there is a spark of nobility in a 
fine horse, a reindeer, or a faithful dog that 
makes man, who is their god, ashamed of his 
own unworthiness. 


I 


A RACE WITH DEATH 

Old Oscar Valdemar and his good wife sat 
in their little kitchen close to the bright fagot 
fire that burned upon the hearth, listening to 
the crackling of the flames, the steady ticking 
of the little Dutch clock, and the mournful 
moaning of the wind outside. 

They were also listening for another sound 
— the merry tinkle of hells on the reindeer 
bringing young Hans Peterson to them with 
tidings of Olga, their beloved daughter. 

They listened and watched with fear and 
foreboding clutching at their old hearts that 
had known many sorrows, and the sorrow that 
now threatened was the most dire of all; for 

Olga, their only daughter, the child of their 
17 


18 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


old age, was in the throes of childbirth, and her 
life hung by a thread. 

It was as though the mist of their sorrow 
hung like a veil in the little kitchen, causing 
them to see but dimly, or perhaps it was tears 
in the eyes of the old couple. There was frost 
upon the window-pane, and on this cheerless 
early winter morning the old folks seemed to 
feel the cold more than ever, for they huddled 
close to each other and stretched their thin 
hands to the bright fire, seeking to absorb some- 
thing of its warmth and cheer. 

Occasionally the toil-hardened hand of the 
man clasped the thin, work-scarred hand of the 
old woman, and then he would say in a cheery 
voice: “Don’t worry, Mother. It will be all 
right. We must trust God and hope for the 
best.” 

The only thing in the dull gray room which 
did not seem to be downcast by the pending sor- 
row was the little sturdy Dutch clock. That 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


19 


seemed to tick even louder than usual, and the 
worst of it was that it would go on ticking just 
as vigorously whether Olga lived or died. 
Finally old Oscar stretched his stiff legs and 
got up slowly and put new fagots on the fire. 
“ I will make more fire, Mother/ ’ he said. “ I 
will warm the stew and the barley cake again, 
and you must eat. You have not eaten since 
yesterday, and you will be sick if you do not 
eat.” 

“ I cannot eat,” replied the old woman with 
a deep moan, ‘ 4 when my child is lying at death’s 
door.” 

“ Tut, tut, Mother,” replied the old man 
chidingly. “ It may not be as bad as we fear. 
I am sure it will come out all right. We must 
have faith; God is good.” 

Presently, while bringing fagots for the fire, 
he stopped in a listening attitude, his whole 
figure tense with suspense. 

“ I hear the bells, Mother,” he said huskily. 


20 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


44 I hear the bells upon the reindeer; we will 
soon know the worst. Be brave, for all our 
sakes.” 

His prophecy of bells in the distance was 
soon realized, for in a very few seconds a merry 
tinkling was heard at the door, and with loud 
trampling of feet, and with a gust of cold air 
that made the old couple shiver more than ever, 
young Hans Peterson rushed like the North 
Wind into the little kitchen. 

4 4 Oh, Hans ! ’ ’ moaned the old woman, 4 4 tell 
me, how is my Olga? Is she alive? ” 

The young man shook the snow from his 
heavy deerskin coat and threw it upon a chair 
before replying, while the two old people 
watched him eagerly. 

44 Yes, Mother/ ’ said the young man at last; 
44 she is still alive, but the doctor says that 
she must have the great surgeon from Dront- 
heim within forty-eight hours or she will die, 
and the child also.” 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


21 


The two old people groaned in unison : * ‘ The 
great surgeon at Drontheim within two days.” 
The round trip was three hundred miles. Their 
little Olga must die after all. God was not 
good, as they had thought. 

“ Our child must die,” moaned the old 
w^man. “ Our child must die.” 

“ Not while I have a breath left in my body 
and the fastest reindeer in Norway to drive,” 
cried young Hans with such ferocity that the old 
couple started with fear. They were old, and 
their nerves were unstrung this morning. 

“ You can never do it, my boy,” said old 
Oscar, shaking his gray head. 

“ I can do it or die in the attempt,” growled 
the young giant. 

“ Mother, bring me barley cake and meat 
enough for two days. Put in enough for three 
days, for there will be two of us on the way 
back. Have it ready in ten minutes.” 

The old woman looked helplessly at her hus^ 


22 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


band and then imploringly up at the young 
man who might well have been descended from 
the Vikings. Then she began to weep. 

“ Mother / 9 said old Oscar sternly, “ you 
must get the barley cake and meat quickly, for 
Hans will be gone in ten minutes, and you do 
not want him to go hungry. ’ ’ 

For the next few minutes the old woman bus- 
tled confusedly about in her larder putting up 
the necessary food, while she sobbed softly to 
herself, wailing: “He can never do it. My 
child must die.” 

But the old man seemed to catch something 
of the younger man’s fire and bustled about get- 
ting his son-in-law the necessary clothing and 
spirits for the journey. 

Meanwhile the faithful hind stood before the 
door, her forefeet spread apart, her head 
drooping, and apparently half asleep. 

Wise beast that she was — she was resting, 
getting her muscles and sinews ready for the 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


23 


long and terrible journey which something in 
the manner of her young master told her was in 
store for them both. 

She did not look a formidable steed, for she 
hardly weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. 
Her coat was long and rather coarse, of a dull- 
gray color, with flecks of light brown. There 
was a white ring around the muzzle and one 
above each hoof. As a naturalist would say, 
she was protectively colored so that she blended 
with the landscape when there was snow upon 
the ground until it took a very keen eye to 
discover her a few hundred yards away, even 
though within plain sight. 

Her horns were branching and graceful, for 
the reindeer or caribou is the only species of 
deer that allow the female horns. 

The simle would have looked very insignifi- 
cant beside even a small horse, but her muscles 
were like rawhide, and her wind was of the kind 
that never gave out or went wheezy. In a two 


24 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


days* run she could have killed three or four 
good horses and left them lying lifeless by the 
roadside while she still trotted untiringly for- 
ward. 

Presently the preparations of young Hans 
were completed ; and he printed a kiss upon the 
quivering mouth of his mother-in-law and gave 
old Oscar’s hand a grip “ in farvel ” that made 
the old man cry out with pain. Then he threw 
his food and extra wraps into the pulk, took a 
hasty survey of his steed and the simple har- 
ness, and, jumping in, they were off on their 
three-hundred-mile race against death — the 
race that was to decide the fate of the young 
and beautiful wife and the little life still 
unborn. 

There were three hundred miles of crunch- 
ing snow, up hill and down dale, between them 
and safety for Olga — and only the reindeer to 
do it. But she was the fleetest hind in Nor- 
way. She had trotted the five-mile course at 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


25 


Bergen in seventeen minutes, and in half a day 
she could kill any horse in the north country. 

So as long as the pulk and the harness held, 
and the simle drew the sledge, he would fight 
for the life of Olga with the last breath in his 
body, and, God helping him, he would save her 
yet. 

It was very cold, but Hans was well clad 
against wind and frost. His vest was made 
of homespun wool with stripes of gorgeous 
colors. Over that he wore a red woolen jersey, 
and over all his heavy deerskin coat. His feet 
were encased in deerhide boots, made from the 
skin taken from the animal ’s forehead, which 
best sheds water, while his head was sur- 
mounted by a very high-peaked cap, which tele- 
scoped and came down to the shoulders, if the 
wearer wished, so that he was only exposed to 
the outer world through small slits at the front. 
The dress was rather bungling, but entirely 
necessary in this frigid climate. 


26 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


It was a typical winter’s night in these north 
latitudes, all moonshine and starshine ; so bright 
that young Hans could have read a paper. 

It was very beautiful, the young Norwegian 
thought, as the light sledge slipped swiftly 
along, drawn by the sturdy reindeer that never 
varied the steady, persistent trot — a gait which 
did not look very fast, it was so steady and 
even. 

But this wonderful creature that he was driv- 
ing was almost like a machine. The fatigue 
which other steeds soon feel was not for her. 
This animal had been built to trot, by a good 
builder, who knew how to stiffen the sinews and 
the muscles, and also to give just that free play 
which can go for hours and never tire. 

Who shall guess the thoughts of young Peter- 
son as he crouched upon the sledge and watched 
the familiar landscape slip by! Sometimes the 
road led through deep valleys where the spruces 
and the firs stood Druid-like, guarding the way 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


n 


on either hand. Deep valleys of despair, the 
young man thought, for the gloom about them 
seemed to settle upon him, and he was always 
glad and breathed freer when they again came 
out on the open way, where they got the full 
shimmer of moonshine and starlight. 

Not so dark and forbidding were the birches, 
although their mantles of moss were nearly 
gone. They seemed, seen in this unearthly 
moonlight and star shimmer, more like the 
ghosts of trees than real trees. 

Whenever they skirted a stream with its daz- 
zling coverlet of ice Hans thought how lifeless 
and dreary it must seem, locked under the ice 
for five months of the year and to be so 
cramped in one’s flowing. 

There were no birds in the trees, no call from 
Ptarmigan, Pipet, or Fieldfare, and no animals 
to be discovered anywhere on the frozen waste 
— for nearly all had “ denned up.” Hans 
thought the earth had never looked so solitary; 


28 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


but it was probably only his own mood that he 
saw reflected in the landscape. 

One hour, two, three went by, and he figured 
that he had covered over forty miles. He esti- 
mated that his reindeer could travel sixteen 
miles for the first hour or two, and then four- 
teen for an hour or two more, and then twelve. 
Finally they must slow down to eight or ten 
miles, and then after six or eight hours of this 
desperate pace they must rest for an hour and 
have feed for the faithful steed. 

Presently he noted that wonderful colored 
shadows, or so they seemed to him, were danc- 
ing over the fields about him; and turning to 
look over his shoulder he discovered that the 
aurora borealis was in full play, — the great 
wonder of this wonderland of the midnight sun. 

One moment the sky would be opalescent, with 
the stars burning brightly in their usual places, 
and then a mighty streamer, extending from 
horizon to zenith, orange, crimson, blue, yellow, 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


29 


and every other imaginable color, would leap 
clear across the northern half of the heavens, 
rising and falling, like an enormous curtain 
fanned by a cyclonic wind; then it would die 
down, and the sky would return to its opalescent 
color, with the stars all burning steadily. Some- 
times the fluttering of this mighty curtain was 
from horizon to zenith, and sometimes from 
east to west, but it was equally mysterious and 
dazzling. Just as though the Creator was set- 
ting off some mighty fireworks, or pyrotechnic 
display, to awe the antlike creatures who 
crawled to and fro on Mother Earth and called 
themselves lords of creation. 

This was the thought of Hans as he gazed 
reverently over his shoulder. How insignificant 
and puny we were, after all, when face to face 
with the workings of nature! How little the 
elements, the wind, fire, and water, considered 
man when they went mad and did the work of 
nature ! 


30 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Hans shuddered as he thought how cold and 
pitiless the world was this night. There was 
no comfort for Olga and the little new unborn 
life in the moonlight and the starshine. Na- 
ture, for all her beauty and mystery, would not 
veer a hair’s breadth from her course if all 
the mothers and all the unborn children in the 
world were to perish that very night. 

It was only man who could help, man with 
his strong muscles and stout heart to fight and 
overcome Nature and her obstacles. 

He squared his broad shoulders, and shook 
the rein that hung loosely along the back of 
the reindeer. At least he and his faithful steed 
would do their- part, and the rest was with 
God. 

At Desseldore he stopped for an hour to feed 
the reindeer and eat a hearty meal, while the 
groom rubbed down the frost-covered deer, 
for her breath froze to the outer ends of the 
hairs in the coat, until the reindeer looked as 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


31 


though she had been frosted over with the finest 
of crystals. 

The hind munched away vigorously for half 
an hour, and then, spreading her forelegs 
apart to steady herself, went fast asleep. 

This was the best thing to do, for it relieved 
all the muscles and made them ready for that 
steely tension necessary to keep up the tire- 
less, endless trot. 

Shortly after leaving Desseldore, Hans 
guided the reindeer sharply to the right and 
struck across Lake Bjornfeld. By this move he 
would cut oft twenty miles from his one hun- 
dred and fifty; for straight across the lake it 
was only twenty miles, while around it was 
forty. 

Here it was much smoother going than it had 
been upon the land, and the reindeer, refreshed 
by food and the few minutes ’ sleep, put forth 
a new burst of speed. 

But they had not been fifteen minutes upon 


32 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


the ice when a blinding snow-sqnall struck them. 
It had been threatening for the last half hour, 
as there had been strong gusts of wind out of 
the southeast, where dark cloud banks had un- 
expectedly appeared. 

Hans drew his cap down further over his 
ears, huddled down in the pulk, and considered 
this new peril. It was not the discomfort that 
he feared, for a little squall like this was noth- 
ing to a man who was frost- and wind-proof, 
but it was the danger of being bewildered and 
then lost upon the lake that filled him with 
fear. 

He had often driven the reindeer across the 
lake at this point to Randsf jord, on the further 
side; but would she remember! Could he put 
any reliance on her brute intelligence and her 
power to keep in a given direction, whether 
guided or not! 

If they were to be lost on the lake they might 
lose hours. 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


33 

Why had he not kept to the road and on firm 
land? 

The storm was at their backs, and if the wind 
did not veer he could guide the reindeer by that 
sign alone, but the storm was a fickle one, judg- 
ing from the rapidity with which it had come 
up; and dared he to trust to the wind? It was 
his only compass. 

Now a thousand doubts and fears that had 
not assailed the young man when he was sure 
of the road began to trouble him. They would 
be lost upon the lake. He would lose precious 
hours, perhaps just enough to be too late with 
the great surgeon from Drontheim. 

Why had he ever taken the route by the lake ? 
The road was further — but it was sure. 

How his muscles ached to do something. If 
he could only solve his difficulty by physical 
exertion; but all he could do was to sit helpless 
in the pulk, listening to the clacking of his rein- 
deer’s hoofs and the sing of the runners on the 


34 * KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ice, while the snow swirled about him and the 
winds buffeted him. 

Presently his heart gave a great leap and 
then nearly stood still. The storm that had 
been at his back a moment before now cut him 
in the face like a knife. What did it mean? 
Had the reindeer turned in a great circle and 
headed back for Desseldore to have the storm at 
their backs? He had not noticed any change 
in direction, so they must be traveling in a 
circle. 

Should he turn his steed about and head her 
again into the teeth of the storm? 

Sweat stood upon the young man’s brow, and 
he groaned aloud in his agony. Perhaps Olga ’s 
life depended upon his decision. 

‘ ‘ Oh, God help me! ” he groaned. ‘ ‘ I am 
lost upon the lake.” 

But even while he spoke he was once more 
perplexed and plunged in still further gloom, 
for the wind was again at his back. 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


35 


This would seem to argue that they were 
traveling in a small circle — one that could he 
completed in a very few minutes. 

He listened to the hoofs of his reindeer. They 
were as steady as the movements of a machine. 
She seemed to know where she was going. Her 
nose was thrust out well in front of her, and 
he could hear her steady, deep breathing, 
without a suggestion of a whistle in it, al- 
though they had traveled nearly a hundred 
miles. 

What a wonderful beast she was ; without the 
intelligence of a horse or the affection of a dog, 
yet doing her duty blindly, with as much fidelity 
as either of these could have done ! 

He would trust in her. The storm might 
shift from his face to his back as many times 
as it wished, still he would cling to the instinct 
of his reindeer. 

With this thought Hans was much comforted, 
and began to recall many instances of which 


36 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


he had heard of how horses had brought their 
masters safe home when they had been lost in 
storms. His reindeer was as good as any horse ; 
he would trust in her. 

So the young giant leaned his head in his 
hands and prayed again. “ God, Thou art 
above the cloud,” he said. 4 4 Guide us safely 
to Randsfjord.” 

It seemed to the tormented man that they 
spent hours upon the ice. This time was longer 
than all the rest of the journey thus far, but, 
finally, when he had about given up hope and 
felt sure that they were lost upon the lake, with 
a sudden plunge the pulk ground upon the crust 
of beaten snow, and Hans knew that they had 
crossed in safety. 

Then a shout of joy burst from his lips, for 
the lights of Randsfjord were just ahead. A 
minute later, as they sped through the streets 
of the little town, he looked at his watch, and 
saw that they had been just an hour and ten 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


37 


minutes on the ice, having made the twenty 
miles in that remarkable time. 

The rest of the run to Mjosen was made in 
three hours and a half ; here they stopped for 
breakfast for both man and beast. 

The faithful simle, after munching upon her 
bundle of reindeer’s moss for perhaps fifteen 
minutes, braced her forelegs as before and 
went fast asleep. She evidently needed rest 
more than food. 

After a rest of nearly an hour, they started 
upon their last lap of twenty-five miles. This 
was covered in about three hours, so that 
shortly before noon they reached Drontheim, 
the home of the great surgeon. 

Hans left his faithful reindeer in the care of 
a friend, in order that she might be fed and 
rubbed down while he went for the doctor. 

He found the surgeon to be a peppery little 
man who did not relish the idea of being tum- 
bled about on a pulk for one hundred and fifty 


38 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

miles. But Hans was not to be refused. He 
coaxed and stormed, wheedled and cajoled, 
until finally the doctor consented, and the start 
was set for three o’clock in the afternoon. 

Promptly at the appointed time the little doc- 
tor, scolding and sputtering at his fate, was 
bundled into the pulk, and the long, hard return 
journey was begun. This was to be the real 
test of both man and reindeer. 

Coming out there had been but one passen- 
ger on the sledge, while now there were two; 
but Hans lightened the load all he could by 
jumping off and running where there was any 
up-grade, while on the level or down-grade his 
weight did not make any difference. 

It is no joke running twelve or fourteen miles 
an hour over slippery snow, and the young Nor- 
wegian soon found it difficult to keep up the 
pace; but he did not spare himself, wishing to 
keep his good steed fresh. 

They made the first lap to Mjosen in good 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


39 


time, and after stopping for a drink of hot tea 
at the inn were off again. 

This time Hans did not dare risk crossing 
Lake Bjornfeld, but had to go around it. To 
add to his difficulties the little doctor continu- 
ally grumbled and cursed his luck at being 
dragged off on this wild-goose chase, as he 
termed it, by a madman. 

Finally the crafty Hans suggested that he 
was a hero, and that his profession would be 
proud of him; that his run of one hundred and 
fifty miles would always stand as a wonderful 
feat in the annals of Norway, and that his own 
name would go ringing down to posterity — so 
the doctor was somewhat mollified. 

It was two o’clock in the morning when they 
reached Desseldore, having rounded the lake. 
Here Hans aroused his friend who had lodged 
him on the way out, and food for both man 
and beast was quickly forthcoming. 

The doctor and Hans gulped down their 


40 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


steaming coffee and ate ravenously, but the 
weary simle only sniffed at her moss, and then 
went to sleep in her accustomed position. 

After allowing the poor beast an hour’s rest, 
they aroused her, and set off again. 

Hans could not help noticing, in spite of his 
optimism, what a heavy load the two men made 
for the faithful hind, so at every possible op- 
portunity he slipped from the sledge and ran. 
How his muscles ached and how heavy his feet 
had become only he knew, but he said nothing. 

His jaw was set like a steel trap. He was a 
true son of the old Norsemen who had fought 
and conquered the sea. His ancestors had over- 
come obstacles, and so would he. 

Finally they narrowed the distance between 
them and home down to thirty miles. 

The little doctor was sleeping soundly, 
slumped forward in a sorry heap. He was evi- 
dently thoroughly tired out. The faithful hind 
was keeping up the slow pace of eight miles 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


41 


an hour with difficulty. Occasionally she 
stopped, unbidden, to rest. This was a sure 
sign that she was very tired. 

Mile after mile they plodded on, Hans calling 
out cheery words, or running beside the deer, 
patting her neck, and cheering her on. 

But he too was nearly spent. His feet were 
heavy as lead, his muscles ached, and he could 
hardly keep his feet from tripping as he ran. 

At ten miles from home he fell heavily in the 
snow, and could not rise. He had gone to the 
very end of his strength. 

He raised himself upon one elbow and looked 
fearfully around him. 

He was dazed. There was a buzzing in his 
head. He was tired enough to sink back into the 
snow and die of exhaustion. 

Then the thought of Olga and the baby 
flashed through his brain, and he sat up, alert 
and eager, but without strength enough to rise 
to his feet. 


42 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


“Wake up!” he thundered at the doctor, 
who at once sat upright and rubbed his eyes. 

“ Listen,” said the young giant in a voice 
terrible with his concentration. “ I can go no 
further, but you must go on. The simle will 
take you to my door. You keep urging and she 
will keep on going. Shell make it. I’m sure 
of that.” 

“ But,” objected the doctor, “ I cannot go 
and leave you. You will die here in the snow 
in an hour.” 

“ I tell you, you must,” raged Hans. “ I 
have not come all this way to be foiled 
here.” 

But the little doctor was obstinate, and would 
not go. 

“ You would go if I were dead? ” asked 
Hans. 

“ Of course I would go if you were dead. 
My duty would then be to the living. ’ ’ 

With a quick motion that the doctor could not 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


43 


stay, Hans drew a large, old-fashioned revolver 
from his coat pocket. 

‘ ‘ Go, then , 9 1 he roared, leveling the revolver 
at his own forehead. “ If yon do not go in 
ten seconds, I will blow my brains out, and then 
you will have to go.” 

The little man with a shudder turned and 
shook the rein over the simle’s back, and she 
trotted away into the gloom, leaving Hans lying 
in the snow, nearly dead with exhaustion. 

He strained his ears after the tinkling bell 
as long as he could hear it, and when the slight 
sound had died away sank down wearily in the 
snow. He was so tired. He closed his eyes, 
and a heavy drowsiness stole over him. 

Two hours later the faithful hind, blowing like 
a wheezy bellows, reeking with sweat, and with 
barely strength enough left to lift her feet, trot- 
ted up to the stable at her master’s home. 

The little doctor seized his medicine chest and 
hurried into the house, all eagerness and atten- 


44 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


tion now his own part in this day’s work was 
reached. 

Old Oscar Valdemar, who had come over to 
his son-in-law’s house to look out for things 
while Hans was gone, soon came stumbling out 
to the shed to care for the faithful reindeer and 
to see if anything of Hans could be discovered, 
for the doctor had merely told them that he was 
soon to follow. 

The simle stood with her legs far apart 
and her head nearly as low as her knees. 

She did not even raise it when old Oscar 
patted her neck, but sank still lower and lower 
to Mother Earth, as though seeking rest. 

While the old man still gazed at her, dum- 
founded to see the splendid beast so completely 
worn out, she sank to her knees, rolled over on 
her side, and stretched out — dead. She had 
found rest at last. 

She had paid the price of beautiful Olga’s 
life and that of the unborn babe, the price that 


A RACE WITH DEATH 


45 


man often exacts from his faithful animal 
slaves — her life. 

But the master himself did not die in the 
snow, as the little doctor had prophesied, al- 
though he might have had not timely aid come 
to him. 

Half an hour after he left Desseldore his 
good friend Vilhjalmur Bjornsen heard of the 
desperate race that he was running with Death 
and set out with a fresh reindeer team, deter- 
mined to overtake him and carry one of them 
the rest of the way. 

Bjornsen soon discovered Hans lying uncon- 
scious in the snow, and, after pouring some 
brandy down his throat, brought him hurriedly 
on to his own home. Following only a mile or 
two behind the faithful hind, Hans arrived just 
in time to hear the first cry of his little daugh- 
ter, and also to hear the glad tidings that the 
mother, golden-haired, blue-eyed Olga, would 
live. 


46 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


It was a happy family that gathered about 
the kitchen fire that night and thanked God 
deep in their hearts that all had come out so 
well. Nor was the dead reindeer in the stable 
forgotten. They could not bring her back to 
life, but her brave part in the two days’ work 
would never be forgotten, and the story of it 
would live for all time in the annals of Norway. 


n 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 

The faithful hind was dead. Her noble heart 
had burst as she stood gasping before her mas- 
ter^ shed at the end of her three-hundred-mile 
run. 

But the fine strain of reindeer blood that 
coursed in her free veins was not dead, for 
Little Lightfoot was munching reindeer moss in 
his snug corner of the shed, just as though 
nothing tragic had happened outside. 

He was a six-months-old fawn, the offspring 
of the fleet Yarsimli and the great buck, which 
were the two finest specimens in the small rein- 
deer herd of Hans Peterson. 

Usually a herd of wild animals such as the 

deer, moose, or buffalo are presided over by a 
47 


48 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


male, who is their leader, determining where 
they shall feed and when they will move, and 
who also guards them from danger. But in 
this case the famous hind was so much larger 
than the buck and was such a good fighter that 
by her sheer force of strength she had assumed 
leadership of the little herd. 

This reindeer herd of Hans Peterson ranged 
in the summertime far to the north, upon the 
southern edge of the great tundra, or barrens, 
which is the natural range of the reindeer or 
caribou throughout the world. This tundra is 
just above the timber-line and between that and 
the snow-line. The firs and the pines were the 
last trees to drop out of the race northward, be- 
fore reaching the land of the tundra, where 
only scrub willow and birches survive. These 
last remnants of birch and willow are very small 
and rather sickly looking, and only found in 
sheltered nooks. 

The more tender and nutritious grasses have 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 49 

also disappeared when the tundra is reached. 
There is still an apology for grass to be found 
on the lee side of friendly rocks, which hold the 
heat of the sun by night, and thus help on the 
slender vegetation. 

The flowers of this inhospitable region are 
few and pale of color, with the exception of 
bright orange beds of polytrichum, the delicate 
little harebell, however, being among the sur- 
vivors. 

The reindeer herd of Hans Peterson ranged 
so far north on the tundra in summertime that 
they came in contact with the large herds of the 
Lapps, which wander unrestrained over the 
tundra. This is the pasture land of the Lapp, 
who is gradually being driven further and 
further into the high mountains to find feeding- 
ground for his herds, that number over four 
hundred thousand head, in both Norway and 
Sweden. 

The reason they have to seek higher altitudes 


50 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


for their pasture is that the farmer in northern 
Norway and Sweden has begun to gather the 
reindeer moss in the summer and stack it up to 
feed their -cattle on in the winter, thus limiting 
the supply. 

This moss is a beautiful gray-green, and 
covers the tundra like a thick carpet. 

Little Lightfoot had been born about the first 
of June, much later than the young of the rest 
of the deer family. Peterson’s herd had been 
feeding northward for several days. The rein- 
deer or caribou is the most restless of all the 
deer species. Several of their Indian names 
signify ‘ 4 wanderer. ’ 9 

They feed restlessly, grabbing a bite here and 
a snatch there, and then moving onward — their 
nervous tails are constantly twitching, and they 
utter that peculiar grunt which is characteris- 
tically their own — a lot of restless, gray-brown 
shadows, shifting and drifting like the wind 
clouds of June over the tundra. 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


51 


For days the great Varsimli had felt dumpish 
and out of sorts. 

Often she would stand for fifteen minutes 
thoughtfully chewing her cud, while the rest of 
the herd moved on and left her behind. 

When they had passed she would look up hur- 
riedly and then trot after her little band. She 
wanted something, she knew not just what, so 
she often sought for it under silvern birches and 
in clumps of pale-green willows. 

At last, on a fresh June day, when the wind 
was blowing briskly over the tundra and the 
sky was nearly free from the scudding wind- 
clouds, she found just the spot she wanted. It 
was a warm, sheltered nook and hidden away 
from inquisitive eyes. There, screened from 
the rest of the herd, or any prowling lynx, or 
wolverine, by birch and willow, she lay down 
and gave birth to Little Lightfoot. 

He was an awkward little chap, all joints and 
legs, like most young deer — of a rusty-brick or 


5& KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


dull-brown color, with a queer little hump at 
the shoulders just like his dam. But when she 
had licked him dry and he at last stood up to 
get his first meal, she thought he was the most 
wonderful reindeer fawn that had ever been 
born on the tundra. 

The first few weeks of Little Lightfoot’s life 
were rather uneventful, as an outsider would 
have looked at it, but it seemed very wonderful 
and full of interest to him. He was no weakling, 
for he was on his feet and following his dam 
the same day that he was born, just as though 
locomotion in that manner was an old trick for 
him. 

He thought some of the yearlings in the herd 
were rather rough and impolite when they tried 
to butt him over and crowd him about, as in- 
deed they were; but he soon learned to stick 
close to his mother, and if the yearlings got too 
fresh the great hind sent them sprawling with 
one shove of her strong head. 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


53 


There are many things for a young reindeer 
to learn, even though he does live on a great, 
lonely, desolate tundra, where there would seem 
to be nothing to fear or avoid. 

He was very inquisitive, as are all the mem- 
bers of the deer family, and was always nosing 
about, smelling and nibbling things. 

One of his first lessons was to learn what 
things he might nibble and nose and what to 
let alone. Brambles and thornbushes he soon 
discovered were not to his liking, for their 
flavor was not good, and they often left a smart- 
ing sensation in his nose which was not pleas- 
ant. The thistle he also learned to avoid. 

There was a very bright green-leaved plant 
that grew on the edge of marshes that he one 
day investigated. His mother discovered him 
just in time, and butted him away from it with 
such ferocity that whenever he saw it after- 
wards it made him shiver with fear and glance 
warily at his dam, to see if she saw him look- 


54 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ing at the hateful plant. Even the nibble or 
two that he got of the plant before his dam 
discovered him made him sick for the rest of 
the day. He drooled and vomited, and had he 
eaten a few more mouthfuls nothing could have 
saved him. 

One day he very luckily discovered a brown- 
ish-gray animal slowly stealing upon him from 
behind a rock near which he was feeding. He 
did not know what it was, but the inherited 
knowledge of the reindeer which had battled 
so long on the barrens told him that this 
stealthy gray form was a menace, so he faced 
about towards it and stamped his forefoot and 
lowered his head just as he had seen his dam 
do on a certain occasion when attacked by an- 
other hind. 

But his bluster did not scare his enemy at 
all. Instead of fleeing away in terror, as it 
should have done at such a brave front, it crept 
stealthily towards him. The long, coarse hair 



The Long Coarse Hair Upon the Fawn's Neck Stood Up, and 
Fear Sent a Shiver Through Him 



LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


55 


upon the fawn’s neck stood up, and fear sent a 
shiver through him. 

The wolverine lifted his great head, with the 
two gleaming eyes and a row of hungry teeth, 
and looked over the top of the bowlder. Then 
the blusterer fled to his dam, terror giving him 
the wings of the wind. 

It was lucky for him that terror had over- 
come him at just this moment, for even then 
the wolverine nearly overhauled him before he 
reached the protecting flanks of the hind. But 
this was another lesson that he had learned — 
the scent of the wolverine — and he never forgot 
it as long as he lived. 

The most persistent and relentless of all 
Little Lightfoot’s enemies were the deer-flies, 
which hovered in a black, angry cloud over the 
herd wherever they went. These did not men- 
ace the fawn’s life, but they often drove him 
nearly distracted, causing the old hind and the 
fawn to flee from the slight cover of willow and 


56 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


birch to the water, and then back again. The 
water was really the best refuge, when they 
could find it handy. These tundra are threaded 
by a few sluggish rivers and dotted with lagoons 
and marshes. 

During the last of August, when there had 
been a long hot spell, the deer-flies came down 
upon the herd in swarms and stung Little Light- 
foot so persistently about the eyes that he be- 
came entirely blind, not because his eyes were 
injured, but the lids about them were so swollen 
that he could not see out between them. They 
burned and smarted so that he was frantic. 
Finally the wise Varsimli saw his plight, and 
speedily took him to the nearest lagoon. He 
stuck very close to his dam’s side, fearing to 
get lost in the strange darkness that had come 
upon him. When they reached the lagoon his 
dam butted him unceremoniously into the water 
beyond his depth. 

It was his wont to wallow about in the shal- 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


57 


low, but the old hind did not seem to remember 
that he was afraid of the deep water, so he 
bobbed about like a cork, blowing and trying 
to keep his head above water. He could swim, 
as can all the wild creatures, instinctively, but 
he was rather timid. 

He could not imagine what had made his dam 
suddenly become so rough and unfeeling to- 
wards him. Presently, as he bobbed about, 
blowing and roiling up the water, his mother 
suddenly thrust her muzzle against the back of 
his neck and plunged his head completely under 
water. Then in an instant he knew what it 
was all about. The wonderful relief of the cold 
water on his burning, smarting eyes. 

After that, whenever his eyes troubled him, 
he would go hurriedly to the water and plunge 
his own head in and keep it under as long as he 
could hold his breath. 

One morning, after they had spent a very 
cold, desolate night in a clump of willows, they 


58 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


came forth to find the world dressed in a new 
and strange garb. The deer moss on the tundra 
was all cold and white. When the fawn under- 
took to nibble it the strange, cold stuff, which 
was like nothing he had ever seen before, chilled 
his muzzle and astonished him. Everywhere it 
was just the same. All the weeds and grasses 
were feathered and starred with this new, 
strange white something, which was soft and 
yielding, yet so very cold. 

This was the fawn’s first experience with 
snow. It was not long after the first snow, 
which was a very slight affair, that the fawn 
had an experience he never forgot. There was 
something so strange and terrifying in this 
event that it burned into his brain, so that 
ever afterwards, when the same scent came, it 
would set the hair erect upon his neck and his 
knees to quaking. 

The little herd of Hans Peterson was pas- 
turing on the extreme southern edge of the tun- 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


59 


dra, next to the tilled land of the poorer 
farmers. Half a dozen miles to the north, rov- 
ing restlessly here and there, was a mighty herd 
of reindeer, numbering perhaps two thousand 
head. These were the property of Anders Poul- 
sen, a very rich Lapp, who was said to breed 
the finest reindeer in Norway. 

Occasionally the little herd of Peterson 
would sight the great herd of the Lapp as they 
ranged down to the southern edge of the bar- 
rens; but most of the time they did not inter- 
mingle. 

One evening, just at dusk, while Little Light- 
foot was getting his supper, there floated down 
upon the evening stillness a sound that made 
all the feeding reindeer throw up their heads 
and some of them to snort. The feeding fawn 
did not know what it meant, but instinctively 
he felt the wave of fear that ran through the 
herd. 

The sound was not voluminous ; indeed it was 


60 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


rather slight, but it was peculiar, — a sound that 
once heard either by man or beast is never for- 
gotten. 

The cry that had startled the little herd of 
reindeer was high-keyed, and mournful beyond 
comparison. It was thin and wavering, like 
the cry of a lost soul. It was unspeakably 
mournful, yet there was a menace to it, and a 
warning. It was the cry of a lone gray wolf 
that sat upon a distant hillock and watched the 
feeding reindeer. 

He did not look formidable, as he was alone 
just then, but this weird, unearthly cry was his 
hunting call, and there were a half dozen of his 
gray associates within reach. 

That afternoon Peterson’s little herd had 
sighted the large herd of the Lapp, so without 
a minute’s delay the old Varsimli turned her 
head northward and led her own herd at a 
slashing trot towards the herd of the Lapp. 
They might not fight off the gray pack alone, 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


61 


but the mighty herd of the Lapp could better 
cope with this gray menace. 

The pace was so terrific that poor Little 
Lightfoot was obliged to strain every nerve and 
sinew of his wiry body to keep from being left 
behind. But the menace of that long, weird 
howl still rang in his ears. Every drop of blood 
in his small body was scared. He thrilled and 
quivered with fright. To him the whole world 
was filled with fear. 

So he stretched out beside his dam and plied 
his long, nimble legs with all the desperation 
of terrible fear; and in this state of mind 
the full-grown reindeer in the little band 
would have had hard work to have left him 
behind. 

They fled like gray specters, all fear-haunted 
and terror-propelled. 

Their muscles sprang and gathered again for 
the jump, like steel springs, and their sharp, 
rattling hoofs made very little noise, instead of 


62 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


clacking loudly, as they did when they trotted 
slowly. 

If they had seen the five gray shapes that 
came slinking from as many different directions 
at the old, lone wolf’s call and formed them- 
selves quickly into a hunting band, it might have 
even quickened their pace. 

But after they had been running for half an 
hour, as they came out on a long stretch of 
rather high-lying land, the old hind discovered 
the gray pack in pursuit, and by a violent snort 
gave the alarm. 

Then all the adult reindeer quickened their 
trot and all the yearlings and fawns their 
gallop. 

On they sped like the wind, while the tireless 
gray pack pursued. 

If no unseen power intervened, the fate of 
the reindeer was sealed. It might take a half a 
day, or it might take a day, to run them down, 
but the tireless gray pack was equal to either 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


63 


run. A small wolf band like this will often 
run down the strong, fleet buck by continually 
cutting across on him, by playing into each 
other’s way, or by driving the quarry to 
water. 

But there was a power which was destined to 
intervene between the little herd of Hans Peter- 
son and the wolves, and that was the great 
reindeer herd of the Lapp, towards which 
the wise old hind was leading her little 
band. 

Fifteen minutes’ more hard running, in 
which time the gray pack had narrowed the gap 
between themselves and the fleeing reindeer 
considerably, then they sighted the stragglers of 
the great herd. 

The old hind once more quickened the pace 
at which she led her small band, and the wolves 
in turn quickened their pace to try to over- 
take them before they should reach this haven. 
There was a desperate race for a few minutes, 


64 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

but the wise old deer led her little band into the 
great circle of the Lapp’s reindeer, with per- 
haps a hundred yards to spare, and they were 
safe for the time being. 

The great herd had evidently gotten wind of 
the wolves, for they were formed ready for 
battle. 

The wise old buck who led them had, like a 
good general, chosen his battleground well. 
His herd was assembled upon a plateau per- 
haps three acres in extent, where there was no 
chance for ambush or flank attack. Here the 
enemy must attack immediately in front or not 
at all. 

It was as desolate a sight as could well be 
imagined; the dreary, lifeless tundra, with all 
the weed tops fringed with snow. All the ver- 
dure that the barrens had boasted in summer- 
time was departed. The wind swept across the 
broad expanse pitilessly. The moon and the 
stars looked down upon the scene coldly, while 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


65 


the two thousand restless, anxious forms of the 
reindeer, in their gray coats, were more like 
ghosts than real, fear-haunted animals. 

The herd was formed in a great circle, per- 
haps a hundred yards across, with the hinds and 
the fawns in the middle and the bucks on the 
outside. They stood like good soldiers, shoulder 
to shoulder, with their sharp-pronged antlers 
at “ bayonet-charge, ’ ’ their eyes red with the 
lust of battle, and flashing with anger. 

Whenever a terrified fawn broke away from 
its dam and ran belling hither and thither, 
it was promptly driven back to the center of 
the herd. 

A cloud of steam, like a great shroud, stood 
above the herd, while every pair of nostrils sent 
forth its jet of white steam. 

When the gray pack pressed close to one side 
of the circle it would bend in at that point, and 
the whole herd would surge away from the gray 
danger. 


66 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


The wolves continually rushed the herd at 
different points, seeking to stampede the com- 
pact body, knowing they could pick up some of 
the stragglers if they could break up the forma- 
tion. 

Occasionally a buck would become terrified 
and run hither and thither, creating panic in 
the whole herd. 

Once, after the gray pack had rushed the line 
of bucks in the circle and nearly broken 
through, a small simle became frantic with the 
scent of the wolves, and, after running about 
the circle several times, sprang clear over the 
outer fringe of bucks and started across the 
tundra. 

She ran almost into one of the gray sentinels 
who had been posted for just that purpose. 
With a great leap he was upon her, and the sec- 
ond snap he got the throat-grip, and dragged 
her to earth. 

From a small hillock, where he and his 


LITTLE LIGHTFOOT 


67 


mother stood at the center of the circle, Little 
Lightfoot saw the gray pack swarm over the 
luckless hind and bear her to earth, never to 
rise again. 

All night long, while the silent, pitiless moon 
and the cold stars looked down upon this battle 
between horns and fangs, the gray pack hovered 
on the outskirts of the herd. Two fawns they 
got, in addition to the foolish simle, and were 
well paid for the night’s hunt. 

For three days the wolves hovered about the 
reindeer herd, but were finally driven away by 
the Lapp herdsmen, who came to the assistance 
of the reindeer. 

Then it was that the little herd of Hans 
Peterson was parted from the large herd, and 
started southward; and the following day they 
trotted into Peterson’s own farm domains, 
where they were safe from the wolves, as 
they did not venture so close to the farmed 
lands. 


68 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

It was not until the mistress saw Little Light- 
foot, and he learned to come to the shed door 
and eat from her hand, that he received the 
name by which we have called him in this 
chapter. 


Ill 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 

About two weeks after Hans’ long and des- 
perate race against death, which cost the life 
of the brave old Varsimle, a remarkable rein- 
deer outfit drove up to Hans’ little cottage. 

The pulk was drawn by two reindeer, instead 
of one, driven tandem. They were very large 
and sleek. Their condition reflected well the 
esteem in which they were held by their master. 

The buckles on the harness were pure silver, 
and glistened in the sunlight, while a silver 
rail ran clear around the pulk. 

The man who sat in the pulk was dressed in 
a beautiful fur coat, his head surmounted by a 
tall fur cap of sable skin, and his whole attire 
bespoke the gentleman. It was none other than 

69 


70 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Anders Poulsen, the richest of all the Lapps, 
and his business was to see if he could buy any 
reindeer from the fine strain owned by Hans 
Peterson. The feat of the faithful hind in cov- 
ering three hundred miles in forty-eight hours 
was the talk of northern Norway, and the 
Lapp was very keen to pick up all the fleet rein- 
deer stock in the country. 

When he made his errand known to Hans, 
the young man looked very grave. Little Light- 
foot was the only immediate offspring of the 
Varsimle that he possessed, and to sell him 
after what his mother had done for the Peter- 
son family seemed like betraying him and a 
breach of fidelity to his dam. 

But young Peterson needed money. There 
was a new mouth to feed. And there had been 
considerable cost in connection with little Jo- 
hanna’s advent into the world, besides the fee 
of the great surgeon, and that had been ap- 
palling to the young Norwegian, 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 71 


For a long time he hesitated, for he well 
knew that once the Lapp set eyes upon the 
fawn he would not rest until he had secured 
him. 

So finally, after debating all the pros and 
cons in his own mind, Hans sorrowfully led the 
way to the shed where the fawn was kept. 

One look at the wonderful fawn was enough 
for the Lapp. His eyes glistened, and his 
usually stolid face for once showed excitement. 
He nodded his head with approval. 

Then a more cautious manner was adopted. 
He walked about the fawn, poking him in side 
and shoulder, and shaking his head. 

But Hans had noted the Lapp’s first start 
and look of triumph on seeing the fawn, and 
gauged his price accordingly. 

To sell Little Lightfoot was like selling one 
of the family, especially since the mistress had 
taken such a liking to him; but money they 
must have. Hans thought of the pale mother 


n KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and the wee face against her breath. Thinking 
of them, he smothered his own liking for the fine 
animal, and, weighing everything in the bal- 
ance, decided to sell. 

After considerable bargaining the Lapp 
counted out five gold pieces into the hand of 
Hans. 

To the poor young farmer it was a king’s 
ransom, but he saw it through a fringe of mist 
upon his eyelashes. He loved his reindeer even 
as the Lapp did, and this particular strain 
meant so much to him and his family. But the 
bargain was concluded. 

Poor Hans stroked the sleek sides and rubbed 
the nose of the fawn for the last time, and the 
Lapp took possession of him. 

He tied a long thong of deerskin about his 
neck and tied the other end to the horns of one 
of his reindeer. 

Then he nodded to Hans, slapped his rein- 
deer on the side with the one rein which is 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 73 


all that is ever used by a Lapp, and they were 
off to the natural home of the reindeer : the land 
of creeping glaciers and beetling mountains, 
dark and forbidding. 

Little Lightfoot had never been halter- 
broken. He had come and gone just as he 
wished since being on the farm, so he took his 
loss of freedom very much to heart. 

At first he sulked back against the rein and 
threw himself. The old reindeer paid no at- 
tention to this tantrum, but simply trotted for- 
ward, dragging him in the snow. This was very 
harsh treatment for a fawn who had always 
had his own way and never been restrained, 
but as he was in danger of having his head 
pulled off, and was being cut by the crust, 
he quickly got to his feet and trotted along 
by the side of the old reindeer, just as 
though he had been her own fawn instead of a 
stranger. 

The Lapp laughed. The fawn had been so 


74 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


quick to discover his mistake that it greatly 
pleased him. Usually these young deer were 
rather stupid, and did not learn quickly, even 
through harsh treatment. Here was a fawn 
that would in time prove a wonder and well 
worth the five glittering gold pieces. 

For two or three hours Little Lightfoot 
trotted easily along by the reindeer team; but 
as they went northward the snow grew deeper 
and deeper and the traveling became more dif- 
ficult. 

Finally the Lapp took pity on the fawn and, 
throwing him, tied his legs and put him upon 
the pulk in front of him. This was the way 
they journeyed up into the land of the Lapp, 
the home of the glacier and the beetling moun- 
tain, the cold, inhospitable land of the tundra, 
and the high mountains beyond. 

For the Lapps are nomads and land’s-end 
people. They have no fixed home, but wander 
where the pasturage is best. 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 75 

The poorer farmers south of the tundra are 
constantly encroaching upon the free lands 
and driving the Lapp further and further 
north. Now they have taken up the custom of 
gathering the reindeer moss for their cattle 
and stacking it up like hay, so the Lapp must 
seek higher and higher altitudes for his great 
herds. 

The reindeer of Scandinavia, Russian Lap- 
land, and Finland now number about four hun- 
dred thousand, and they will probably never be 
more numerous in that country, as the poor 
farmer is driving the Lapp towards the snow- 
line. 

But the future of the reindeer is not wholly 
concerned with Scandinavia, for there is a 
great natural feeding ground for these wonder- 
ful deer in America. There is room for ten 
million reindeer in Alaska, where their own 
gray-green moss grows just as freely as in 
Norway, and there is room for fifty million in 


76 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


the Canadian Northwest. Some day these 
great natural reindeer pastures will be swarm- 
ing with millions of deer, and their meat will 
be for sale in every market in the United States 
and Canada. 

Lapland, the home of the Lapp who must 
always be regarded as the domesticating genius 
of the reindeer, is a long, narrow country lying 
along the bleak shores of the Arctic and At- 
lantic oceans, and along the White Sea. It is 
formed by taking the northern end of Norway 
and Sweden, a piece from Finland, and a slice 
of Russia. So you see it is not a country by 
itself with a government, but a portion of sev- 
eral countries. It is merely the country that 
the Lapps inhabit. 

It is a high-lying plateau, surmounted by 
frowning mountains, whose tops are never quite 
free from snow. 

This is partly because this land of the Lapps 
extends as far north in Russia as the Arctic 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 77 


Circle, while the whole of the country lies well 
above the temperate zone. 

Down the sides of these mountains, for sev- 
eral months each year, the glaciers are continu- 
ally slipping and sliding on their way to the 
sea. The valleys between these mountains are 
deep, and much warmer than the mountain- 
tops, and the Lapp takes advantage of this, 
keeping his herds in the sheltered valleys. 

There are three kinds of Lapps — the Fisher 
Lapps, the Forest Lapps, and the Mountain 
Lapps. 

The Fisher Lapps live by the sea, and get 
most of their living from fishing. The Forest 
Lapps live in or near the forest, while the 
Mountain Lapps live for the better part of the 
year in the mountains. These latter are the 
people whose living comes entirely from the 
reindeer, just as the American Indian lived 
entirely upon the bison. 

The villages in Lapland are very small, ouly 


78 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


a few hundred people, and it takes very little 
to cause a village to entirely disappear. 

Most of the land is held by rich Lapps, who 
do not really own it, but have wandered for so 
long over the same territory that they have 
established a sort of ownership which is recog- 
nized by fellow-Lapps. Such a Lapp mogul 
will have a series of camping-places, at which 
he will spend a few weeks each year, perhaps 
making the round in a year’s time. 

The reindeer of such a man often number 
several thousand head, and he has many herds- 
men and poorer Lapps to follow his camp and 
work for him. 

In the wintertime the Lapp moves often, as 
the feed for the herd is scarce, so he rarely 
stays more than a week in a place. In May 
he turns his reindeer loose to run, for a time, 
wild, and the young are born early in June. 
In July he is busy making cheese and butter — 
putting in a supply for winter. In August the 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 79 


deer-flies often become so troublesome that the 
herdsmen again round up the reindeer and 
drive them away to the mountains. 

This herding process is accomplished by 
catching one of the deer and putting a bell upon 
it, just like the bellwether in a flock of sheep. 
The rest of the herd follow the bell, and by 
leading the bell-reindeer the whole herd is con- 
trolled. 

After the first frost in September has killed 
the deer-flies and the gnats, the herd is again 
turned loose, and wanders at will, until the 
snows get so deep that it is again necessary to 
guide them to the best feed. 

It was to one of these great herds owned by 
the mountain Lapp Anders Poulsen, a mogul 
among his fellows, that Little Lightfoot was 
journeying. 

He did not like being bound by deer-thongs, 
as they made his legs ache and cramped him; 
but the Lapp often leaned over and patted him, 


80 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


so lie knew he intended him no harm. Finally 
his new owner loosened the thongs and left him 
nearly free, while he threw the end of a blanket 
over his head, and soon he fell asleep. 

For a whole day and a half of another they 
journeyed up into the land of the Lapp, while 
the snows grew in depth and the air in keen- 
ness. 

At last they reached the temporary headquar- 
ters of the Lapp, which were in a deep valley, 
and here the thongs which tied Little Lightfoot 
were loosed, and he was set free. 

He was so stiff from the long ride in the 
cramped position that at first he could hardly 
stand upon his legs, but his nimbleness soon 
came back to him, and he frisked and capered 
about just to try out his joints and to show 
the scores of reindeer that he saw standing all 
about what a really lively fawn could do. 

From that time on Little Lightfoot was 
merely one of a thousand, a unit in the great 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 81 

herd. Occasionally his master sought him out 
to see how he was getting on, but aside from 
that he was left to fight his own battles and 
get along the best he could. 

Little Lightfoot’s chief trouble at this time 
came from being so large for his age. All the 
yearlings in the herd mistook him for a year- 
ling. This put him in the position of having 
to fight an unequal battle. He was continually 
being pushed about by the yearlings, all of 
whom wanted to engage in butting matches with 
him. 

Although he was large, he was not hardened 
as were the yearlings, and his strength had not 
come to him; but he was pushed and butted 
about unmercifully. 

The calves he could push and hustle about 
as freely as the yearlings did him, so he got 
even with fate by butting them for all the but- 
tings he received at the hands of the yearlings. 

It was very interesting for him to watch a 


82 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


buck digging in the snow for reindeer moss. 
It seems almost incredible that these hardy 
animals can sustain life at all when there is 
three or four feet of snow upon the ground, 
but they can, and keep sleek all the time. 

The buck would select a spot where his intu- 
ition told him the moss was luxuriant, and then 
he would go after it like a dog after a wood- 
chuck. He would dig away the snow with his 
.horns and hoofs, making it fly like a good 
snow-shoveler. 

Further and further down he would go, until 
at last he was almost standing on his head and 
the hole was three or four feet deep. 

All this time the hinds would be standing 
about watching their lord, for they make him 
unearth their breakfast for them. 

At last the violent twitching of the buck’s 
tail would tell them that he had found moss. 
Then they would drive him away and appropri- 
ate the hole for themselves. 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 83 


It is a peculiarity of the deer when feeding 
that the tail always twitches, so that in all the 
sign languages of the American Indians the 
sign for deer is made by holding up the index 
finger and wiggling it. 

Little Lightfoot had watched the bucks dig- 
ging in the snow for a couple of days before he 
discovered what it all meant. All the deer 
family are very curious. If they do not know 
what an object is, they will circle about it, 
coming nearer and nearer until they discover. 
It is because of this curiosity that the deer 
can be shot by the process known as wigwag- 
ging. The hunter lies in the grass and waves 
a cap or a flag above the grass tops. The 
deer circles about until it comes within range. 

So Little Lightfoot finally went and looked 
into one of the deep holes and saw that there 
was reindeer moss at the bottom. He was very 
hungry, so he went sprawling down after it. 
He had partly satisfied his hunger when he was 


84 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ruthlessly dispossessed of his finding by a 
belligerent hind who literally lifted him 
upon her antlers and tumbled him out of the 
hole. 

The same hind, later on in the day, discovered 
that he was a fawn. This was when he tried 
to get his supper at her udder. And as she 
had lost her own fawn the week before she 
adopted Little Lightfoot, and after that, with 
his foster-mother to look out for him, things 
were more to his liking. 

One great bully there was among the year- 
lings who seemed to have a special grudge 
for Little Lightfoot. He was no match for the 
yearling, who was about twice his weight, so his 
only recourse was in flight, and he kept out of 
the bully’s way; but there was an occasional 
red light in the eye of the fawn which showed 
he could be filled with wrath even at his age. 

One day he caught the bully just where he 
wanted him. He was looking into a deep hole 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 85 


that a buck had dug in the snow while pros- 
pecting for moss. 

Without a second’s hesitation Little Light- 
foot went at him behind like a battering ram, 
and as the bully was off his guard he sent him 
floundering to the bottom of the hole. 

He did not run away even then, although his 
act had been a rash one, but stood guard above 
his enemy and butted him back as fast as he 
tried to get out. 

This cured the bully of his antagonism, and 
after that Little Lightfoot had no more trouble 
from him. 

It was a dreary, desolate life, this existence 
of the Lapp ’s reindeer, compared with the semi- 
domesticated life of Hans Peterson’s little herd. 
Peterson’s herd could always find shelter in 
the lea of buildings, or even in open sheds that 
he had built for them, but the reindeer of the 
Lapp were always out in the open. It was a 
question whether they slept more by day or 


86 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

night. They were restless, and perhaps this 
was a habit they had formed, partly to keep 
warm, for they were always moving hither and 
thither. 

Sometimes at night they would gather in 
small bunches huddled up together for warmth, 
with their backs to the wind. 

In the daytime also they often gathered in 
small groups along the warm and sheltered 
slopes, and there they would stand dozing and 
chewing their cuds. But for the better part 
of the day they were always trying to grub out 
a living down under the snow-banks. 

When the snow-banks at last partially melted 
and patches of half -frozen moss appeared above 
the snow, the herd seemed to take on a new 
interest in life. 

Even the great, desolate, lonely tundra was 
glad in its cold, silent way, for now the cat- 
kins had been shaken out on the willow. Soon 
the pale, ethereal green leaves upon willow and 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 87 


birch would appear, and the stunted flora would 
again gladden the land. 

About the time when the first patches of 
green appeared the herd was turned loose and 
no longer controlled as it had been in the win- 
ter. Only Little Lightfoot and a few other 
choice yearlings — for he was now almost a year- 
ling — were kept together. 

Just about this time Anders Poulsen made 
a rather long journey to see some of his kins- 
men among the Fisher Lapps, and this jour- 
ney changed the whole subsequent life of Little 
Lightfoot. 

The master had been with the Fisher Lapps 
about three days, and was thinking of return- 
ing, when a great vessel suddenly appeared off 
the little fishing village. 

A boat soon put off, and American sailors 
came ashore. 

It appeared that the boat was from the 
American revenue-cutter u Bear,” and the of- 


88 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ficer in command of the small boat said that the 
cutter had been skirting the coast of Norway, 
Sweden, Finland, and Russian Lapland in 
search of some of the finest strains of reindeer 
to be had. He would pay good money. 

His government was desirous of getting the 
best deer possible to improve a new herd in 
the barrens of Alaska. 

The fisher kinsmen of Anders Poulsen at 
once told the officer of the celebrated hind that 
had made the wonderful run of three hundred 
miles in forty-eight hours, and also introduced 
the mountain Lapp as the owner of her off- 
spring. 

At first Anders Poulsen was obdurate. He 
had bought this strain to keep, but the officer 
of the “ Bear ” finally shook so many glitter- 
ing gold pieces in his face as the price of the 
fawn that he yielded, and sold his favorite. 

It was arranged that the cutter should pick 
up the fawn at a fishing town on the further 


THE HOME OF THE REINDEER 89 


side of the peninsula, and Poulsen at once re- 
turned home to deliver the fawn. 

Again Little Lightfoot went upon a long 
journey with the Lapp's splendid team of rein- 
deer, driven tandem, but now he was large and 
strong enough to trot all the way by the side 
of the adult deer. 

His pace was so free and easy and he had 
such a stride for a yearling that Poulsen was 
almost sorry when he saw the cutter's boat 
again coming ashore for the yearling. 

But a bargain was a bargain, so he patted 
the fawn's sleek sides just as Hans Peterson 
had done a few months before, rubbed his 
nose, and pocketed the stranger's shining 
gold, for which man has betrayed so many of 
his friends. 

They unceremoniously bound Little Light- 
foot and threw him into the boat. He kicked 
and thrashed, but it was useless, so he at last 
lay still and looked with wide eyes across the 


90 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


great water, while the boat rowed away to the 
cutter. 

When they had reached the great ship ’s side 
the sailors let down a rope, a loop was fastened 
about the fawn’s neck, another about his girth, 
and kicking and floundering he was dangled for 
a few seconds above the white sea, suspended 
between heaven and earth, but the next moment 
was sprawling upon the deck of the American 
revenue-cutter, a full-fledged American rein- 
deer, bound on one of the most remarkable voy- 
ages that a wild animal ever took, outside a 
circus. 

Before Little Lightfoot again set hoof on 
Mother Earth the ship saw many strange 
sights, for they were destined to half girdle the 
earth and sail in every clime. 


IV 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR ” 

The revenue-cutter “ Bear,” upon whose 
slippery deck Little Lightfoot now found him- 
self dangling helplessly at the end of a rope, 
was a long, rakish ship, perhaps two hundred 
feet in length. 

She was strongly built for service in the Arc- 
tic, and also made for speed, as she was one of 
Uncle Sam’s policemen upon the high seas, 
and would often have to pursue poachers and 
smugglers. 

She was narrow in the beam, and of consid- 
erable draught. There were three small guns 
mounted upon her forward deck, in case she 
had to use force in stopping miscreants upon 
the high seas. 


91 


92 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


But her duties as policeman often led her 
into many other vocations. Wherever she 
could do good in the behalf of Uncle Sam’s 
citizens she was always willing to lend a hand. 

She had just come from a long cruise along 
the Siberian coast, where she had been looking 
for some trace of a lost Arctic expedition. 
Scientists had thought that the expedition, al- 
though lost upon the American side of the pole, 
might drift to the Asiatic side, so the “ Bear ” 
was in search of any trace of the ship 
that would show how the expedition had per- 
ished. 

She was also picking up reindeer for Uncle 
Sam’s far-off territory of Alaska and recruit- 
ing the herd that Sheldon Jackson and other 
philanthropic men had dreamed of establishing 
in that country. 

She had touched at a point in Russian Lap- 
land, and had taken on several choice reindeer. 
It was from the Russian Lapps that the cap- 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


93 


tain of the boat had heard of the celebrated 
reindeer of Norway, and especially the great 
herd of Anders Poulsen, the Lapp. 

He had, therefore, sent a boat ashore, and 
the result had been that two days later Little 
Lightfoot was dangling at a rope’s end on the 
deck of the “ Bear,” bound for far-away 
Alaska. 

He was at once hustled unceremoniously into 
the reindeer quarters, which were aft and on 
the lower deck. 

On the deck several stalls, or pens, had been 
built, each with a manger for reindeer moss and 
a bucket for water. The floor had been covered 
with sod, and it was altogether rather comfort- 
able quarters for a calf or any more domesti- 
cated animal than a reindeer. 

But these restless wild deer had been born 
and bred upon the vast, free tundra. The one 
thing that they had possessed above all others 
was space, and they took advantage of it, and 


94 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


were continually wandering, to-day in one spot 
and to-morrow in another. 

Even in the shed at Hans Peterson’s, Light- 
foot could always caper out into the fields if he 
wished, but here the little reindeer was in 
prison, for what, he knew not. But he did 
know that he hated the cramped quarters of his 
pen and longed for the great herd of Poul- 
sen, or better still for the free, glad days 
when he had run with his dam upon the 
tundra. 

The “ Bear ” turned her sharp nose to the 
northwest and for several days was busy skirt- 
ing the Scandinavian peninsula. 

It was the last of May, but the ice was still 
running freely in these northern latitudes. She 
was constantly bumping against small cakes of 
ice which had been broken off from large bergs, 
and almost continually she plowed through 
slush. When the full sunlight fell upon these 
ice fields, and the ice caught the sunbeams and 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


95 


broke them into all their prismatic colors, it 
was a wonderful sight. 

After the “ Bear ” had rounded the penin- 
sula, she came into the North Sea, and here 
the ice all disappeared, and the air, which 
had been cold because of the ice, became 
balmy. 

It was while in the North Sea that the 
‘ ‘ Bear ’ 9 stopped at a Dutch port, and received 
orders from the Navy Department. 

These orders called her at once to the Eng- 
lish Channel, where she joined herself to two 
colliers, and convoyed them as far as Gibraltar, 
on their way to the Philippines. 

Then she bade farewell to her sister ships, 
and once more turned her nose westward, bound 
across the Atlantic. 

She had been five or six days out of Queens- 
town, and was feeling her way along at half 
speed — as she was nearing the Grand Banks 
and the bergs were still running — when the 


96 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Marconi instrument at her mast began clicking 
away frantically. 

It was an S.O.S. cry for help, flung over the 
dark expanse of the broad Atlantic, through 
the splendid genius of Marconi, — a message 
that would send as many ships as heard it to 
the right-about and head all their prows to- 
wards the ship in distress. 

The 44 Bear ” pointed her nose southward, 
towards 45-76, and put on full steam. 

Black, gritty stokers and engineers worked 
frantically at the engine, and the long keel of 
the 4 4 Bear ’ ’ slipped through the dark Atlantic 
at full speed, regardless of the black night, for 
a sister ship was in peril. 

Soon a bright light glowed along the south- 
ern horizon, and all knew that their worst fears 
had been realized, that they were to be treated 
to that horrible spectacle — a burning ship at 
sea. 

Nearer and nearer they drew to the scene of 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


97 


the disaster, until at last they could see the 
flames shooting skyward at the bow of the 
ship. 

When they came into the bright circle of 
light — for the fire illumined the sea for a mile 
about in every direction — they found other 
ships already standing by, and small boats were 
putting off to rescue the terrified passengers. 

The following two hours were never forgot- 
ten by the crew of the “ Bear,” especially Billy, 
the cabin boy, whose tow hair fairly stood up 
in fright as he saw the frantic people quickly 
lowered into small boats, while the waves 
threatened to engulf them, and then the boats 
climb slowly up on the crest of the waves and 
battle their way back to their respective ships. 

After two hours of this heartrending work, 
under the unearthly glare of the light from the 
burning ship, which made the faces of the men 
as they worked even more ghastly, the last pas- 
senger was taken off, and the “ Bear,” in com- 


98 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


pany with three other vessels, stood by to see 
the doomed ship sink. 

As the flames gained headway the bow of the 
ship settled more and more in the water, until 
the climax. This came about three hours after 
the “ Bear ” had received the wireless. With- 
out much warning the vessel suddenly reared up 
her stern, while the flames shot three hundred 
feet into the sky in a splendid funeral pyre, 
and with a roaring, and hissing, and crackling 
of the burning hulk, she sank to a watery grave. 
How many fathoms beneath the boiling surface 
God only knew. 

When the last vestige of the ship had disap- 
peared, the “ Bear ” turned about and went 
upon her course towards Cape Sable, not for- 
getting to report the incident of the burning 
ship to the Navy Department by wireless. 

She had only been upon her course a few 
hours when she received another wireless. 

This time the message was not as tragic as it 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


99 


had been before, for it read: 4 ‘ Icebergs re- 
ported off the Grand Banks. Patrol the north- 
ern lane until further orders.” 

So the faithful policeman of the high seas 
turned about again, and for six weeks went pa- 
tiently back and forth in the northern lane off 
the Grand Banks, searching all the time with 
horn, and glass, and thermometer for that most 
dreaded of all perils at sea — the iceberg. 

At the end of six weeks the bergs had ceased 
to run, and the “ Bear ” again went upon her 
way; but again she was not destined to proceed 
very far. 

She was hailed off Cape Sable, and this time 
to go in search of smugglers. She touched in 
the night at a New Brunswick port, and took on 
board a United States marshal, and then for 
nearly a week stood off the coast between New 
Brunswick and Maine, watching for the 
prey. 

Finally one night, when they had nearly given 


100 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


up the search, the muffled panting of a small 
engine was heard near at hand. 

Slowly the “ Bear ” crept forward, and then 
with her powerful searchlight did the trick. 
The smuggler tried to run, but a shot across 
her bow and another over her midship soon 
brought her about, and she was towed into 
Portland harbor, a prize for the government. 

From this point the “ Bear ” proceeded on 
her way unmolested, until she reached a point 
off Cape Cod, and here the wireless again way- 
laid her. 

A Cape town was having a great celebration 
and was to have some warships from the navy 
— a part of the North Atlantic squadron — for a 
naval parade, so the “ Bear ” was ordered to 
join the demonstration and help celebrate the 
birth of the old town. When this duty was over 
she once more started on her way for the Horn, 
en route to Alaska. 

Off Old Point Comfort she was hailed and 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


101 


ordered into Hampton Roads, to be inspected, 
and also for supplies. 

Here another week was consumed before the 
‘ ‘ Bear ’ ’ again went upon her way. 

While in the Caribbean Sea she was hailed, 
this time from Key West, and had to turn about 
and rescue some American citizens who were 
bottled up in one of the Central American 
states in a revolution. When these unfor- 
tunates had been rescued and transferred to a 
passenger ship from Porto Rico to Boston, the 
‘ ‘ Bear ’ ’ again resumed her course. 

She was obliged to stop, however, at Rio de 
Janeiro and Buenos Ayres upon government 
business, so that it was not until late autumn 
that she finally rounded the Horn. 

It may be well imagined that all this tedious 
sea voyage was anything but pleasant for the 
reindeer in their cramped quarters on the lower 
deck. A more complete change could hardly 
have been chosen for them, accustomed as they 


102 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


were to the vast, lonely tundra of the Old 
World. 

But Little Lightfoot felt it the least of all 
the herd, as he was a privileged animal on the 
ship because of the friendship of Billy, the 
cabin boy, who was also the son of the captain. 

Billy was watching, all eyes, when the young 
reindeer had been pulled aboard that spring 
day on the White Sea, and from the moment 
that the forefeet of the fawn touched the deck 
he appropriated him for a pet and companion. 

Used as the reindeer fawn had been to the 
petting of Olga, his Norwegian mistress, in the 
days when he was one of Hans Peterson’s herd, 
he took most kindly to Billy, and licked his 
hand and butted at him playfully. 

So all through this long voyage the friend- 
ship grew. 

Whenever Billy was free to do so, he would 
steal away to the reindeer stalls, and fondle 
and talk to Lightfoot. 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


103 


Finally he got permission from his father, 
the captain, to lead his four-footed friend about 
the ship, and the sailors, when they saw them 
coming, would always sing out, “ Here comes 
Mary and her little lamb. ’ ’ 

Billy soon discovered that the reindeer was 
nearly as nimble as a goat, and a rather good 
climber. After that they were likely to appear 
in any part of the ship. 

Many of the sailors also became friends with 
Lightfoot, and he was finally adopted as the 
ship’s mascot. 

Billy also discovered that this four-footed 
friend was very partial to salt, and he was 
often caught stealing salt from the cook’s galley 
for him. 

He would tuck away much of his food 
in his pockets at mealtime, and steal away 
to the reindeer quarters to try it on Light- 
foot. 

Pastry the reindeer did not seem to care for, 


104 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


but cereals, like oatmeal, he would eat, and also 
beans. 

Billy developed his friend’s butting habit by 
holding up a coat on a handspike for him to 
butt at by the half-hour. 

He found that the reindeer could strike 
viciously with the forefeet when he had a mind, 
and likewise kick. 

Although their play was often rather rough, 
because of the growing strength of the rein- 
deer, it was always good-natured, for Lightfoot 
almost never showed any anger or temper. 

While nearing the Horn a most surprising 
adventure befell Lightfoot, and one that nearly 
ended his eventful life. 

Some of the highest waves to be found any- 
where upon the Seven Seas are to be encoun- 
tered near the Straits of Magellan, on the east- 
ern side of the continent. 

This may be partly due to the narrowness of 
the straits, or to the curved shape of the land, 


THE CRUISE OF THE 44 BEAR ” 


105 


but in either case some of the waves running 
near the southern end of the continent are 
fairly mountainous. 

Little Lightfoot and Billy had been having a 
fine romp on the lower deck. The young rein- 
deer now went almost anywhere upon the ship, 
except aloft. He would often be left to himself 
for an hour or two at a time, as everyone was 
on good terms with the mascot. 

Billy had been romping with him, when their 
play was cut short by duties that called him to 
another part of the ship. 

He went at once, forgetting to tie up the rein- 
deer in his stall. 

Half an hour later the lookout cried out, 
44 Comber ahead; comber ahead.’ ’ 

The great wave was almost upon the ship be- 
fore the warning was given, so each sailor, if 
he happened to be in an exposed place, caught 
hold of the nearest thing that bade fair to prove 
a good anchor. 


106 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


The wave in question proved to be the very 
father of combers, and swept both the lower and 
upper decks, making a tremendous roaring and 
swashing, and leaving tons of water in the 
ship’s hold. 

When the great wave had passed, it was a 
bedraggled and sorry-looking set of sailors who 
counted noses and took an inventory of the 
damage. 

A boat or two had been smashed and some 
loose things washed overboard, but no further 
damage done. 

Things were settling down in their accus- 
tomed routine after the flurry, when Billy came 
running, wild-eyed and breathless, on deck. 

‘ 4 Where was Little Lightfoot? Where was 
Little Lightfoot? ” He had left him upon the 
lower deck half an hour before, and he was not 
to be found. 

The mate said he guessed the reindeer would 
turn up all right, and all hands turned to and 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


107 


searched for him. But all to no avail. They 
scoured the ship from end to end, but no mas- 
cot was to be found. 

The mate shook his head sorrowfully, and in 
answer to Billy’s breathless appeal as to what 
had become of him pointed his finger over the 
side of the ship. 

“ He’s been washed overboard, shipmate,” 
he said kindly. “ He’s gone to feed the 
sharks.” 

Billy turned without a word, that they might 
not see the tears in his eyes, and the lump in 
his throat was so big he could not have spoken 
even if anything was to be said. 

But there was nothing to say. His pet had 
gone to feed the fishes, as the mate had said, 
and it was all his fault. If he had been care- 
ful to tie him up when their romp was over, it 
never would have happened. 

He went sorrowfully below, to be alone with 
his grief. 


108 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Half an hour later Billy went on deck, his 
heart heavy, and in a mood to see no one. 

His foot had just touched the last step when 
he heard the ringing voice of his father calling 
from the bridge, ‘ 1 Reindeer ahoy ! reindeer 
ahoy! Reindeer aloft, Billy.” 

It is safe to say that no other cabin boy ever 
made the distance from the lower deck to the 
captain’s bridge in the time that Billy did. 

When he reached the bridge, panting and 
pale, there, sure enough, was Little Lightfoot, 
where the great wave had lifted him, licking the 
salt water from his gray coat, and looking just 
as though nothing exciting had happened. 

‘ ‘ Oh, shipmate ! ’ ’ cried the boy chokingly, 
throwing his arms frantically about the rein- 
deer ’s neck, ‘ ‘ I thought I had lost you. ’ ’ 

Once more the rope-end was brought into 
play, and the reindeer, kicking and pawing the 
air, was lowered to the deck and safely tied in 
his stall. 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR 


109 


No more exciting mishaps befell him during 
the long voyage. 

The cutter had to stop at a port in Chili to 
take part in a revolution, and again in Central 
America to take some refugees away from a be- 
sieged city ; but at last they reached the western 
coast of the United States. 

It was now too late to make the remainder 
of the trip to Alaska, for navigation had closed 
a month before, so the reindeer were unloaded 
and cared for at a reindeer station in the State 
of Washington, and the cutter went about 
Uncle Sam’s business in the Pacific. 

Here for six months the young reindeer lived 
upon the fat of the land. He was confined in 
a corral of several acres, which seemed almost 
like the tundra, after the cramped stall in the 
ship. 

But, best of all, he was attended, as were the 
rest of the herd, by two Lapps, whom the United 
States Government kept at this station just for 


110 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


the purpose; and who knows the wants of the 
reindeer better than the Lapp ? 

There were tons of bagged reindeer moss, 
and barley, and rye, tasting just as delicious as 
though it had been raised in old Norway. 

Lightfoot grew like the proverbial weed, his 
coat became sleek, and during the latter part 
of his stay in the corral he began putting out 
two small knobs. You might have wondered 
what they were, but Lightfoot would have told 
you, had he been able to talk English, that they 
were going to be horns — his very first. 

Finally, early in May, when that great fleet 
of Alaskan boats point their noses northward, 
and shake off the sloth of winter, the “ Bear ” 
came steaming into the harbor of Seattle. 

She loaded with supplies for teachers and 
government agents away in the frozen North, 
and last of all loaded her consignment of rein- 
deer, and started upon the last leg of her long 


cruise. 


THE CRUISE OF THE “ BEAR ” 111 

She went by the inland passage, and, stop- 
ping at Juneau and Sitka, left some supplies at 
the Aleutian Islands, and then was off for 
Nome. 

She was full early, and had to break her way 
towards the end of her journey. 

It was almost the first of July before she 
reached Teller, Alaska. 

When the morning for unloading the reindeer 
came round there was one individual on the 
“ Bear ” who was anything but glad, and that 
was Billy. In fact, he was down in Lightfoot’s 
stall, with his arms about the reindeer’s neck, 
laying his cheek for the last time against the 
face of his animal friend. 

“ Good-by, old shipmate,” he blubbered as 
the Eskimo herders came down to the stables, 
to take the reindeer ashore. “ We’ve been good 
pals, and I hate to let you go.” 

Lightfoot in his turn rubbed his nose against 
the boy’s cheek and licked his hands. 


y 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 

Five years have now elapsed from that event- 
ful day in the career of Little Lightfoot when 
the revenue-cutter “ Bear ” set him down at 
the reindeer receiving station at Teller, Alaska. 

Since that day he has had an eventful life, 
as the life of a reindeer goes, hut through all 
its vicissitudes he has grown both in stature 
and strength, until to-day he is the largest, 
strongest, and fleetest reindeer in the New 
World. 

But stranger than all this is the fact that 
once again he is the property of Hans Peterson, 
whose fawn he was when he ran with his dam 
upon the tundra of northern Norway. 

Just how all this came about I will tell later 

on ; but now I wish to turn aside and show what 
112 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


113 


it was that caused Lightfoot to be purchased 
by the captain of the revenue-cutter “ Bear ” 
and taken so far from his native tundra. 

In the year 1892 Sheldon Jackson, who was 
then general superintendent of education in 
Alaska, imported the first herd of reindeer ever 
seen in this country. There were only sixteen 
head in this little herd, which was brought from 
Siberia and placed at Unalaska, one of the 
Aleutian Islands. 

The reason for Sheldon Jackson’s strange in- 
novation was this: 

About thirty thousand Eskimos and Indians 
were in danger of starvation in Alaska. Steam 
whalers were penetrating further and further 
northward, driving their prey before them. 
The gasoline schooner was devastating the wal- 
rus herds, while the firearms of the whites 
were making the caribou and moose harder and 
harder to obtain. 

Not only was the poor Eskimo losing his 


114 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


food, but also the whalebone, walrus tusks, and 
pelts, which were his sole means of barter, both 
with the trading-posts and with his neighbors 
across in Siberia. Up to that time all the rein- 
deer skin worn in Alaska had been purchased 
from native tribes in Siberia. 

If something could not be done for the Es- 
kimo he would have to be fed by the govern- 
ment or starve; hence Sheldon Jackson’s ex- 
periment. 

The little herd was a success from the start, 
and in 1894 the government took the matter 
in hand. Six thousand dollars was the first 
appropriation per annum, but it has subse- 
quently been increased to twenty-five thousand. 

The government loaned the revenue-cutter 
“ Bear ” for the importation of the deer, and 
for the ten years from 1892 to 1902 fifteen hun- 
dred and sixty-five deer were imported. 

From this nucleus the herds have increased 
to thirty-three thousand six hundred and ten 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


115 


head, and the number of reindeer stations from 
the receiving station at Teller, Alaska, to forty- 
five stations. These stations are placed all the 
way from Point Barrow, on the north, to Lake 
Iliamna, on the south, and from the Tanana 
River, on the east, to Bering Sea, on the west — 
an area of four hundred thousand square miles. 
Nearly all this land is “ barren ,’ ’ as it is called 
in this country and “ tundra ” in the Old 
World. 

The government agents have trained Eskimo 
boys not only to herd and break the deer, but 
also to care for them in every way. 

The first teachers employed for the Alaskan 
Eskimos were the Siberians from whom the 
reindeer were purchased. But these men 
proved rather sullen and unwilling to impart 
their information, partly because they knew 
they would ultimately lose the trade from 
Alaska, so the government finally turned to the 
pleasant and willing Lapps, who have made a 


116 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


science of reindeer raising and who understand 
it as none other. 

The Eskimo reindeer apprentice must be 
able to read and write and to keep herd ac- 
counts. At the end of the first year this boy 
is given eight deer, and at the end of the second 
year the same. The two following years he is 
given ten deer per annum, so at the end of five 
years, with the natural increase, he has a herd 
of fifty deer, which are his own property, worth 
anywhere from twenty-five to forty dollars per 
head. 

The ownership of reindeer is kept entirely 
in the hands of the natives. No white man can 
purchase a female deer. 

The reindeer has been used some for pack 
purposes in Alaska, but not as extensively as in 
Siberia. 

The Eskimo herdsman lives in a log cabin 
for nine months of the year — during the long 
Arctic winter — near to the favorite feeding- 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


117 


ground of the herd. Two boys usually tend a 
herd of a thousand. They are assisted by a 
little deer-dog that has also been imported from 
Lapland for the purpose. He helps with the 
herding just as a sheep-dog helps with the 
sheep. 

The most striking results from the introduc- 
tion of reindeer into Alaska are yet to come. 
The four hundred thousand square miles of 
tundra in that country is capable of feeding 
ten million deer, while the correspondingly 
much larger area of barrens in British America 
will feed perhaps forty million head. With this 
mighty herd adding to the meat supply of the 
continent, what economic advantages might be 
obtained, all because of Sheldon Jackson and 
his little herd of sixteen deer. 

While Lightfoot had been fighting the battles 
of a reindeer buck in the Alaskan herd — battles 
under the Arctic night, which often ended in the 
death of one of the assailants — a remarkable 


118 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


chain of circumstances had befallen his former 
master, Hans Peterson, who, with his family, 
had come to cast in his fortunes with the rein- 
deer people in Alaska. 

It had come about quite naturally, although 
it seemed so strange. Hans had long wished 
to get away from the worn-out farm in north- 
ern Norway, and he thought the New World 
offered better opportunities for a young 
giant like himself who was willing to 
work. 

Especially had he been attracted by the 
stories of gold to be gained by the hardy and 
the courageous in Alaska. 

So when he received a letter, some five years 
after the event that started the fawn upon his 
world-girdling trip, from a cousin in Minne- 
sota, saying that he had been commissioned by 
the United States Government to select ten 
reliable men from among the Lapps or Nor- 
wegians to help in the work of training and 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


119 


caring for the deer in Alaska, he was naturally 
much excited. 

The pay was good, when compared with the 
meager living he obtained from the farm, and 
besides it would bring him close to the gold 
fields, so the position was accepted. 

The farm in Norway was sold, together with 
the reindeer and most of the personal belong- 
ings of the family, and within a month from the 
time of the receipt of the letter they were on 
their way to America, full of enthusiasm and 
hope. 

They did not take the long and tedious route 
which the fawn had traveled before them, but 
went straight to New York by a North German- 
Lloyd steamship, then by rail to Seattle, and 
from there by steamship again to St. Michaels, 
at the mouth of the Yukon River. At this 
point they transferred to one of the flat-bottom 
river steamers plying on the Yukon, which in 
turn landed them at Nulato, where there was 


120 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


a reindeer station, a Roman Catholic Mission, 
and a public school. 

Here they lived in a little log cabin in a shel- 
tered valley upon a small creek, a tributary of 
the Yukon. 

Hans Peterson’s new occupation was that of 
superintendent of instruction in the herding 
and breeding of the reindeer in the Yukon dis- 
trict, his territory comprising about ten rein- 
deer stations scattered over a very wide 
area. 

These trips often covered hundreds of miles 
over hard trails, and much of the time during 
the most inclement weather. He was used to 
the Norway winters, so the Arctic winters of 
Alaska had no terrors for him, but it was often 
very lonely for Olga and little Johanna while 
he was away. 

His meeting with the reindeer that he had 
sold five years before in Norway to Anders 
Poulsen, the Lapp, was as astonishing as it was 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


121 


welcome, and in keeping with the strange events 
of this story. 

He had gone over to the Roman Catholic Mis- 
sion for supplies and for the mail, where he 
made the acquaintance of Father Adelbert, a 
Roman Catholic priest. Naturally the talk 
drifted to the subject of reindeer, and Hans 
told with pride of the celebrated strain of deer 
that he had bred in Norway, which he believed 
the largest and fleetest deer that ever drew a 
pulk. 

“ Speaking of Norway deer,” said the good 
man, “ would you like to see the fleetest and 
largest deer in Alaska? He too is descended 
from famous Norway stock.” 

Hans was all excitement, although rather in- 
credulous as to this deer, so the missionary led 
the way to the small open shed at the hack of 
his cabin, where he often kept the deer tied, 
ready for a trip. 

Hans’s eyes fairly glistened as they took in 


m KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

the fine animal, tall, subtle, sleek, and with 
muscles as hard as rawhide. 

He was fully a hand taller and fifty pounds 
heavier than any reindeer Hans had ever seen, 
and he wanted him for his own at the first 
glance. 

< < There is a story connected with this deer, ’ ’ 
said the father, rubbing the nose of the animal 
affectionately, “ although I have never more 
than half believed it. It is said that his dam 
was driven three hundred miles in forty-eight 
hours, to save human life, and at the end of the 
journey fell dead. 

“ The captain of the revenue-cutter 4 Bear ’ 
heard of this wonderful strain about five years 
ago while he was cruising along the Norway 
coast and purchased him of a Lapp named 
Anders Poulsen.” 

A great lump filled the throat of Hans Peter- 
son at these words, and, rough man that he was, 
tears coursed down his cheeks. He had never 


BARREN FOR TUNDRA 


123 


been comfortable about the selling of the fawn, 
and Olga, his wife, and little Johanna, whom 
he had told much of the famous fawn, had 
also wished that they might have kept it. 

“ The story is all true,” said Hans, after a 
long pause in which neither man spoke. “ I 
was the man who drove the hind three hundred 
miles in forty-eight hours, and I sold the fawn 
to Poulsen. I was poor and needed the money 
or I would never have done it. 

‘ 4 It seemed like betraying him after what his 
dam had done. 

“ There will be joy in my cabin on the Yukon 
if you will sell me the deer. I want him more 
than you can possibly know. I will give you 
twice what he is really worth. ’ ’ 

Father Adelbert considered. This deer was 
not much more to him than any other good rein- 
deer, although he was a fine specimen. Perhaps 
these people had the first claim on him. 

So after some further parley the purchase 


124 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


was concluded, and Lightfoot was once more 
the property of his first master, Hans Peter- 
son. 

As Hans had predicted, there was joy in the 
little log cabin on the Yukon that night when he 
related the wonderful story to Olga and little 
Johanna, while the deer, munching moss in the 
lean-to shed at the rear of the cabin, was also 
well content, for there was something about this 
new master that appealed to him. His touch 
on the rein and his voice when he spoke were 
both sympathetic. The starbuck had found his 
master, and was content. 


VI 


THE RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 

The new life of the Petersons was very 
strange to them in many ways. They had lived 
in a northerly latitude in Norway, but it was 
far south of their present home on the banks 
of the Yukon. 

They had had friends and acquaintances in 
Norway, but here everyone was a stranger, 
though these New World adventurers and 
pioneers did not stand on ceremony. They were 
“ hail fellow well met. ,, To meet a man once 
was to be well acquainted with him, and friend- 
ship of a few hours’ duration often cemented 
lifelong ties. 

The town boasted only two dozen log houses, 
besides the Mission buildings, the schoolhouse, 
the trading-post, and the fort, where soldiers 

125 


126 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


were sometimes quartered, but which was more 
often empty. 

Olga did not wish to send little Johanna to 
the Mission school, so she taught her at home. 
She was a fine story-teller, one who could draw 
upon the imagination when necessary, so on 
tedious winter nights when Hans was away on 
long trips the two would sit by the cheerful 
wood stove while the mother told the little girl 
stories, and very often they turned with wist- 
fulness to the old days in Norway, with fine old 
Norse folktales, which always delighted the 
little girl. 

For their special friends they had Father 
Adelbert, the Catholic priest and head of the 
Mission; two Indian teachers at the school — 
nice boys who had been trained for the work 
at the Indian school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania — 
the factor of the trading-post, and two or three 
officials of the Alaska Commercial Company, 
who attended to the receiving and sending of 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 127 


freight by the river boats. But these were all 
they could really call friends, although every- 
body was on speaking terms with everyone else 
in such a community. 

The one event in the monotonous life of the 
little town was the coming of the river boats. 
Then everybody, from the oldest man to the 
youngest woman, hastened down to the wharves 
and gazed, fascinated, at the great, noisy 
river boat. It was as motley a crowd that 
gathered at the wharves on these occasions 
as you could find anywhere on Mother 
Earth. 

There were whites who hailed all the way 
from Maine to California, Indians who had 
come down the river in their canoes, and Es- 
kimos who had come up in their kyaks, with a 
sprinkling of silent huskies, all eager and alert, 
half-starved scavengers, watching for what 
they might steal. 

In the summertime the huskies are turned 


128 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


loose and left to hang about the camp or town 
and shift for themselves. 

Their owners rarely feed them, and conse- 
quently they degenerate into thieves, ready to 
snatch anything they can lay teeth upon. 

For this reason all provisions and supplies 
in Alaska are usually kept in a little house 
which is set upon posts eight or ten feet from 
the ground. 

Plain box coffins are also frequently placed 
in the same way, but not wholly because of the 
dogs. In this portion of Alaska the subsoil 
never thaws out, but is frozen down for hun- 
dreds of feet. For this reason it is sometimes 
very hard to dig a grave, so the whites often 
resort to the Indian custom of placing the body 
upon a platform above the reach of wolves and 
huskies. 

During the first winter of their stay in 
Alaska Hans Peterson received a duty call that 
carried him upon one of the most trying and 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 129 


dangerous trips lie had ever experienced up to 
that time, although, in after years, he had many 
close calls in this land of hardship and adven- 
ture. 

He was down at the trading-post, enjoying a 
pleasant evening with the factor, when their 
exciting game of cribbage was interrupted by 
the hasty entrance of two frost-covered, panting 
Eskimos, and after them scrambled a pitiful, 
limping, half-starved dog-team. Both men and 
dogs were nearly “ all in.” 

They brought a letter from Mr. D , the 

general superintendent of education for the 
United States in Alaska, and this letter set 
everyone in the little town into the wildest ex- 
citement. 

Eight whaling vessels were locked in the ice 
north of Point Barrow, and five hundred Ameri- 
can sailors were in a starving condition. Re- 
lief must be had immediately if they were not to 
starve. 


130 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Hans Peterson was ordered to gather at 
once all the available reindeer at the station, 
and to begin with the least possible delay a 
march of a thousand miles across the desolate, 
congealed tundra, bringing meat upon the hoof 
in the form of his reindeer herd to the starving 
sailors. 

It was a trip that might well make the stout- 
est heart to quail. The barren tundra was cov- 
ered with snow two or three feet deep on the 
level, and in places the drifts were twenty feet 
deep where a thick clump of willows, perhaps, 
had caught the snow and lodged it. Much of 
the way they would have to carry firewood, as 
the small green willows were the only firewood 
available on the mighty, cheerless, lifeless 
expanse. 

They would have to tramp afoot twenty or 
thirty miles a day, with the snow anywhere 
from the knee to the thigh, often with the wind 
blowing violently, and with the thermometer 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 131 


from thirty to fifty and sixty degrees below 
zero. 

But the worst thought of all to Hans was 
that he would have to leave Olga and little 
Johanna for the rest of the winter alone in 
the log cabin, and also that haunting possibility 
that he might leave his bones upon the pitiless, 
desolate tundra, and thus leave them to fight 
out their remainder of life’s battles alone. 

But Hans was a brave man, and his wife 
Olga was a brave woman. With her arms about 
his neck and tears streaming down her cheeks, 
she bade him go at once and have no thought 
of them, but to remember the starving sailors. 
They would be all right. 

So Hans hastily gathered together a herd of 
one hundred deer, selecting only bucks, secured 
the services of two Eskimo herders to help in 
driving, and started off across the Yukon 
upon this perilous, desperate race with starva- 
tion. 


132 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Hans went ahead, taking their course by the 
compass, as they traveled far from the moun- 
tains, so the compass was their only guide. 
Close behind him followed the 4 4 bell-deer,’ ’ a 
fine old buck. The rest of the herd straggled 
after them, while the two Eskimos came behind 
with the sledge on which was the camp equip- 
ment. This consisted of a deerskin tent, a 
small sheet-iron stove, coffee-pot and frying- 
pan, coffee, pepper, salt, and sugar, but 
very little other provision. They would live 
out of the herd by killing a deer every few 
days. 

The Eskimos took turns in driving the sled 
deer and driving the herd. The deer, which 
were very hungry, continually scattered out to 
feed. Whenever they came to a portion of the 
tundra where the wind had swept it clean of the 
snow and the moss was plenty, it was almost 
impossible to get them to make the distance 
agreed upon for the day’s march. But the 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 133 


herdsmen were greatly aided by two queer little 
deer-dogs which Hans had brought with him all 
the way from Norway. The Eskimos called 
them “ Snap ” and “ Snarl.” 

Hans and the Eskimos found it very much 
more efficacious themselves to bark when trying 
to head off refractory deer than to shout, so 
there was sometimes a continuous chorus of the 
barking of the two dogs and the three men. 
Often the men barked until they were fairly 
hoarse by night when the hard day’s work was 
done. 

The deer did most of their feeding, however, 
at night, and they often strayed three or four 
miles away from camp. Then in the morning 
the Eskimos would go in search of the herd and 
round it up for the day’s march while Hans 
got breakfast. 

Hans always planned to camp by one of the 
sluggish creeks which flow from the mountains 
to the sea, crossing the barrens at right angles. 


134* KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


They were usually fringed with willows, and 
these offered all the shelter there was to be 
had from the biting winds. 

They could also get water from the creek. 

In half an hour after the camping-place had 
been selected they would have the snow cleared 
away and the tent up and tied down to the 
stems of the willows ; even this was not always 
sufficient to keep the tent over their heads. 
Then the little sheet-iron stove would be set up, 
with the stovepipe thrust out through a slit in 
the tent, and they would start the fire from some 
willow fagots they had dried the night before, 
and also get new willow to dry for the next 
night. 

Hans understood very little Eskimo and the 
Eskimos very little English, so it was usually 
a silent meal of fried deer meat and tea, varied 
by having coffee for breakfast and dinner. 
Coffee seems to be a staple with these pioneers ; 
whether they be miners or trappers, on the 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 135 


trail or in camp, they must always have coffee, 
if they can get it. 

It took them four days to make the one hun- 
dred miles to Battles, and here they were joined 
by another white man, Mr. Anderson, from the 
Mission, and two more Eskimo herdsmen. 

The Battles party also added a hundred deer, 
with another tent and outfit. This would be 
their full quota until they should reach Point 
Rodney and Cape Prince of Wales, where an- 
other herd was to join them. 

It was not until after they left Battles and 
struck off into the unbroken, lifeless, endless 
barrens, with five hundred miles of desolation 
between them and Cape Prince of Wales, that 
the full significance of the journey was realized 
by Hans. 

Away and away stretched the desolate waste. 
The only sign of vegetation was an occasional 
clump of willows in a moist spot. Frequently 
they would come to a lake of two or three miles 


136 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


across, where they would make good time, for 
the deer could not feed while the going was 
good. 

But even on the lakes there would often be a 
thin skin of ice over the thicker ice, and be- 
tween them three or four inches of slush. Here 
the sledges ran harder even than on snow. 

The fourth night out, when they had covered 
about one-fifth of the distance to Cape Prince 
of Wales, the wind came up and blew very vio- 
lently. It was with difficulty that they could 
pitch the tent. When they tried to start a fire 
the wind continually un jointed the stovepipe 
and filled the tent with smoke, so one of the 
Eskimos finally stood by the pipe and held it 
together at the joint. 

A half-cooked supper was eaten at last, and 
they went early to bed. The deer-dogs whined 
and whimpered so persistently at the tent flap 
that they were let into the tent; but they con- 
cluded the tent was colder than out of doors, 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 137 

so they went outside and burrowed in the snow 
as usual. 

The Eskimos were soon snoring, but the vio- 
lent gusts of wind made Hans nervous. At last 
he dozed off, but was soon aroused by a more 
violent gust than usual, and waked just in time 
to see the wind lift the tent on the windward 
side, and with a crack like the flapping of a 
sail in a stiff breeze the tent was gone. 

Hans had just presence of mind enough to 
grab at a corner as it disappeared over his 
head, and as good luck would have it he held on. 

Out into the darkness he went, tumbling down 
and rising again, fighting like a madman to 
keep possession of the end of the tent, which 
continually bellied and flapped as the howling, 
demoniacal wind caught it. 

Finally he managed to bring the squirming, 
writhing thing down in the snow, and sat upon 
it. Then with frantic bellowing he guided the 
two Eskimos to the spot, and together the three 


138 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


half -dressed men dragged the flapping, unwieldy- 
tent back to the camping-place ; hut try as they 
would it was impossible, in their half-frozen 
state, to get it back in place, so they crawled 
back into their sleeping-bags, with the tent 
partly under them and partly over them, and 
slept out the rest of the wretched night. 

But the very worst of their troubles came 
three days later, when they had covered over 
half of the distance to Cape Prince of Wales. 

About two o ’clock in the afternoon a lowering 
cloud-bank appeared in the northwest, while 
on the tundra it seemed unusually calm. But 
there was a peculiar phenomenon, for little 
spirals of snow could be seen suddenly rising 
and winding heavenward in funnel shape. This 
without any wind, as though the snow was 
moved by some unseen hand. The Eskimos 
seemed much alarmed, and continually pointed 
to the cloud and talked among themselves. 
They also talked to Hans, and seemed to be try- 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 139 


in g to explain something to him. He did not 
understand, and so they plodded on. 

But in half an hour’s time it had grown so 
dark that they could not proceed further, so 
they halted and started to make camp. They 
had barely scraped away the snow when the 
“ poorge ” (or Russian blizzard) was upon 
them in all its fury. 

It blew so fiercely that they did not dare to 
put up the tent. Some of the gusts were so 
violent that several of the reindeer that had 
huddled together in a scared bunch near the 
camp were blown over upon their sides and left 
kicking and sprawling in the snow. 

The wind increased to almost a tornado, so 
the men lay down in the snow and clung to the 
roots of the stunted willows to keep from being 
blown away. 

And added to this was the fact that the mer- 
cury fell rapidly, so they were in danger of 
freezing if it kept up for long. 


140 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Occasionally there were bits of ice like hail 
in the wind, and it cut the face like a knife. 
Both Hans and the Eskimo were bleeding freely 
on their faces. 

Finally one of them lifted his head to see if 
the wind had abated any. “ Snap,” one of the 
deer-dogs, was whimpering nearby, where he 
had managed to lodge himself in a clump of 
willows, but at that instant a cake of ice about 
the size of a man’s fist came hurtling through 
the air, struck him squarely between the eyes, 
and he stretched out dead. His troubles were 
over. 

After two hours of this fiendish, howling, 
swooping wind the storm abated, and the half- 
frozen men crawled out of their hiding and 
made camp. 

That night they ate frozen deer meat, and 
went to bed without their hot tea, taking a pull 
at the flask that they carried for emergency 
instead. 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 141 

The following morning when they came to 
round up the herd it was found that about fifty 
head had broken away and made a 1 ‘ bee-line ’ 9 
for the mountains, which at this point were 
about a hundred miles away. They followed 
them for half a day, thinking to overtake them 
and bring them back, but had to go on without 
them. 

To chronicle the desperate trip further would 
be useless. It was too desolate, too monotonous. 
It was one dull round of trackless snow. The 
men tramped mile on mile, their legs aching, 
their feet heavy, constantly slipping in the 
snow or in the slush on the lakes, and if the 
snow had blown away on the barrens they con- 
stantly slipped on the “ niggerheads, ’ 9 which 
were their worst menace. These are hard- 
knotted bunches of fern or brake-roots which 
bulge up here and there. They are as slippery 
as though greased, and they frequently strained 
their legs or sprained their ankles; but there 


142 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


could be no cessation of travel, for somewhere 
in the frozen sea away to the north of Point 
Barrow four hundred men were starving for 
want of the meat they were driving to them on 
the hoof. 

One morning, when they were only two days ’ 
journey from Cape Prince of Wales, where they 
were to be joined by another herd, a thought 
suddenly came to Hans that left him speechless 
and gasping and laid a blackness over the rest 
of the journey. 

It was this : the reindeer who had drawn the 
sledge with their provision was the old-time 
Little Lightfoot, now the mighty buck — the 
faithful old starbuck, the fleetest deer in 
Alaska, his most priceless possession, whom he 
loved, after his family, the most of anything 
in the world. 

Would the fine deer have to be sacrificed when 
he reached the starving sailors? Could he save 
him? 


RESCUE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED 143 


True, he was meat like the rest of them, but 
he was so much more than that. He was a 
comrade on a long journey, and a friend at all 
times. Hans would talk to him as though he 
had been human. He meant so much to the 
family. Then Hans fell to thinking of that des- 
perate ride when the old hind had brought the 
surgeon to Olga and saved both the mother and 
child. 

He could not let them kill him. But they 
would consider the deer only as another head. 
If they were starving, and if the starbuck stood 
between human life and starvation, then he 
could not say them nay. He could not protect 
the starbuck. He would have to let them kill 
him just like any other reindeer. 

After this to Hans the journey was one long 
round of mathematics. How many reindeer 
would it take to feed four hundred starving 
sailors for ten months. 

He thought and thought until his brain 


144 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


ached and his heart was heavy, but he plodded 
wearily on. He must do his duty. They were 
starving, and the starbuck was only a deer. 

Vt 7 hile Hans and his companions are covering 
the rest of the weary miles let us turn aside and 
see what it was that sent them upon this des- 
perate errand in which the fate of the old star- 
buck hung in the balance. 


VII 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 

Some five or six months before Hans Peter- 
son and his companions started on their peril- 
ous march eight whaling vessels from San 
Francisco had been lying in Bering Sea, just 
off the Diamond Islands, waiting for a favor- 
able wind to clear the straits of ice. At last 
it came, about the first of July, and they all 
pointed their noses northward and slipped up 
through the strait into the Arctic Ocean. Then 
they turned their bows eastward and skirted 
the northern coast of Alaska. 

For the next two months they hurried in and 
out among the islands and through the straits 
and bays that fringe the northern coast of 

North America in search of whale. They 
145 


146 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


hunted all the way from Point Barrow to the 
mouth of the Mackenzie River. 

Formerly they would not have had to ven- 
ture so far north for whale; but the gasoline 
schooner had done its fatal work, and the whale 
in the Pacific were nearly extinct. 

The season was only about three months 
long, so they hunted feverishly. They were on 
good terms with the Eskimos about the mouth of 
the Mackenzie and along the northern coast of 
Alaska, so they traded rifles and ammuni- 
tion, clothes and provisions, for caribou meat 
and skins. They were specially glad to get the 
fresh meat, as it kept them from getting scurvy, 
as they might have had from a strictly salt- 
meat diet. 

The catch had not been large, so they stayed 
until the last day of grace before heading their 
prows hack towards the straits. 

Even then they would have been in time had 
not an obstinate southwest wind sprung up at 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 147 


just the wrong moment. It filled the straits 
with ice as they were about to enter, and packed 
it so thoroughly that they could not plow 
their way through. 

They still hoped the wind would shift and 
free the passage, but obstinately it held south- 
west, and before they knew what was happen- 
ing the great freeze had sealed the passage for 
nine months, and they were caught like rats in 
a trap. 

There were two dangers that confronted 
them. One was starvation, as they had only 
about four months ’ provision, and the other 
was that the ice might crush their vessels in 
the spring when it broke up. They could 
abandon their ships and thus escape shipwreck 
if the worst came, but food they must have. 

To get help by sea was out of the question, 
so they finally hired some of the Colville River 
Eskimos to carry word to Point Barrow. It 
could be sent from there by the reindeer mail 


148 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


route to Teller, and perhaps help could be had 
from that quarter, although how it would come 
the sailors knew not. 

The Eskimos had done their work well, as 
had the agents at Teller, and Hans Peterson 
and his companions were on the march with 
four hundred head of reindeer, among which 
was the old starbuck, the idol of the Peterson 
family. 

It was now the middle of February, and the 
desperate sailors had been living upon half 
rations for the past two months, with just 
enough more left for another week. 

They were pale, emaciated, and sullen — more 
like wolves than men. They rarely talked, and 
when they did it was of meat — red, bloody, 
juicy meat — meat that would satisfy the pangs 
of hunger that were gnawing their vitals out. 

They hated the sight of each other, and old 
shipmates glowered savagely at one another. 
Many of them had scurvy. 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 149 

Two had died, and several more were dan- 
gerously ill. 

The one thing they needed was meat. 

Word had been sent back from Point Bar- 
row that their cry for help had been forwarded 
to Teller, and that a reindeer expedition was 
on the way. 

For days half -frozen men had clung in the 
rigging of the different ships straining their 
eyes for the first sight of the long-promised 
herd. 

It was a bitter-cold morning, and the 
wind howled and shrieked in the rigging of 
the ships, and sent all but the most hardy 
below. 

Two forlorn salts stood by the wheel of the 
largest of the whalers and growled at each other 
like two polar bears. Their cheeks were sunken, 
their eyes were red and hollow, and they were 
desperate with hunger. 

“ Bill,” snarled the first, “ when you looks 


150 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

at me you alius looks just as though you wanted 
me to die so you could eat me.” 

“ You are too durned lean an’ poor for me ter 
eat,” growled Jack. “ I’d eat you, though, 
quick enough if you would hev the goodness ter 
die.” 

“ Now, Jack,” returned Bill, 4 ‘ hain’t you and 
me been shipmates ever since we wuz kids an’ 
sailed on the ole 4 Jerry Jordan ’ ? What’s the 
use of glowerin’ at each other like we was 
wolves? ” 

“ I know it, shipmate,” replied Jack. 

4 4 Usual there ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for 
you, but we hain’t ever been up agin no sech 
as this. 

“ I tell you, Bill, I hain’t got no morals nor 
manner left. I am a wolf, or any other durned 
animal you air a mind ter mention. 

“ Let’s go aloft an’ see ef we can’t make out 
that reindeer fleet they have been talking about 
for so many weeks. Seems ter me it is about 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 151 


time they hove in sight, ef they air ever goin’ 
to drop anchor in these here waters.” 

“ Go along if yon want ter,” growled Bill. 
u There ain’t no reindeer fleet. It was all a 
durned bluff.” 

Bill bit off a cud of tobacco from his last 
plug and chewed it savagely, while Jack went 
slowly aloft. 

“ It ain’t no use, old shipmate,” Bill 
shouted after him in a milder tone. “ We air 
goin’ ter starve, that is what’s cornin’ ter 
us.” 

But Jack had barely reached the lookout and 
faced about to the south, when his ringing cry 
full of savage triumph was heard in every part 
of the ship, even above the shrieking of the 
wind: 

“ Reindeer ahoy! reindeer ahoy! Reindeer 
on our starboard.” 

Jack climbed down from the lookout in frantic 
haste, and in about two seconds after he reached 


152 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


his shipmate he and Bill were piling over the 
sides of the ship, armed with harpoons. 

A poor, shivering wreck of a sailor climbed 
upon the gunwale and bellowed at the top of his 
voice, ‘ ‘ Meat, meat, meat ! ’ ’ 

All of his shipmates took up the cry, ‘ 4 Meat, 
meat, meat! ” 

The wind flung it across to another ship, and 
it echoed from bow to stern, “ Meat, meat, 
meat! ” Stil another ship caught up the cry, 
and repeated it. It spread like wildfire from 
ship to ship, echoing across the frozen Arctic, 
until the entire crews of the eight ships were 
nearly all of them crying, ‘ ‘ Meat, meat meat ! ’ ’ 
like demented men, just as though that was the 
only word they knew in the English language. 

Hans Peterson was on the sledge at the front 
of the herd, driving the starbuck. He was foot- 
sore and spent. His eyes were bloodshot like 
those of the half-starved sailors, and he was 
nearly as gaunt as they. When he had heard 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 153 

the first cry of meat it sent a shiver through 
him. It seemed more like the cry of a wolf 
than the cry of a man; but when he heard the 
famine cry ringing through all the eight ships, 
echoing and re-echoing over the frozen sea, his 
heart grew sick within him and his chin sank 
down on his chest, and he sobbed like a child. 
It was awful. The starbuck must go. This 
pack of ravenous wolves would stop at nothing ; 
and how could he ask them to spare the star- 
buck when they were like this. 

Just at this moment two ravenous sailors, 
armed with harpoons, came running towards 
him across the ice, brandishing their weapons. 
Their bloodshot eyes were fixed upon the star- 
buck. 

On they came, crying, “ Meat, meat! ” and 
shaking their harpoons. 

At first Peterson sat upon the sledge dazed, 
but when they came alongside and raised the 
harpoon, about to plunge it into the noble deer, 


154 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Hans sprang up like a madman and shook his 
great fists in their faces and threatened them 
with death if they so much as touched a hair of 
the starbuck. 

‘ ‘ I know you are starving, ’ ’ he groaned, find- 
ing his voice, “ but spare him until the last. 
Kill all the rest, and then if you are still hungry 
kill him. He’s like my own brother, but I can’t 
see you die.” 

With these words the exhausted, half-frozen 
man fell his full length in the snow. 

The two sailors, Jack and Bill, threw down 
their harpoons and picked Hans up tenderly and 
carried him to the cabin of their own ship, 
where he was laid in the captain’s bunk. 

“ Damn me,” growled Bill, “ if hearin’ him 
take on so about his ole deer hasn’t plum taken 
away my appetite. I only hope they ain’t all uv 
um been adopted like this here one.” 

For days Peterson lay in the captain’s bunk 
tossing in fever. The only doctor on the eight 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 


155 


ships, a sort of quack, attended him, and did 
what he could for the man. He said that he 
was “ all in,” and it would be a close call for 
him. 

The one thing that tormented Hans day and 
night was the fate of the starbuck. “ I know 
you are hungry, boys,” he would mutter. “ I 
don’t blame you, but he is like a brother,” 
and then again he would mumble, “ I know 
you are hungry — God ! shall I ever forget 
that cry — but don’t kill him until the very 
last.” 

This one thought haunted him so persistently 
by day and night that the kind-hearted sailors 
finally rigged up a pulley and hauled the great 
deer, who had been spared through the inter- 
vention of Mr. Anderson, over the side of the 
ship and then fairly carried him, kicking and 
struggling, down to the cabin. 

They led him snorting and afraid over to 
Hans ’s bunk. They thought that Peterson was 


156 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


almost at death’s door, but to the astonishment 
of everyone he reared upon his elbow and gazed 
wildly at the deer. 

‘ ‘ Is it you, old starbuck, * ’ he whimpered, ‘ 1 or 
is it only a ghost? Have they killed you? Are 
you dead? ” 

Then the deer recognized his master under 
these strange conditions, and reached out his 
nose and licked the man’s hand. 

Hans fell back on his pillow with a joyous 
cry. “ It’s him,” he gasped in a whisper so 
feeble that they could hardly hear him, “ and 
he’s alive.” 

Then the doctor bent down close to his ear 
and said : 

“ He’s all right, man. They are going to 
keep him. You will drive him back to the 
Yukon in a couple of months.” 

“ They are going to keep him,” repeated 
Hans, and a faint smile stole over his face. 
“ They are going to keep him,” he repeated, 


MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! 157 


“ and I am going to drive him back to the 
Yukon to Olga and little Johanna,’ ’ and with 
these words he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, 
and the doctor said he would live. 


vm 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 

Hans Petekson did not die, but came rapidly 
back to health and strength. 

In the opinion of the captain of the ship and 
the physician the turning point in his sickness 
was the visit of the starbuck to his bunk and 
the assurance that the noble animal would not 
be butchered. 

After his recovery, Hans was for starting at 
once on the return trip, as he thought it would 
be very lonely for Olga and little Johanna in 
the log cabin on the Yukon, but Mr. Anderson 
and the Eskimos said, “ Wait.” The tundra 
was then in the most desperate throes of winter, 
and only those who had experienced them fully 

knew what that meant. The young Norwegian 
158 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 159 


finally yielded to their advice and spent several 
weeks with the whalers, he and Mr. Anderson 
being the special guests of the captain of 
the largest and most comfortable of the 
ships. 

Finally, however, Hans could stand it no 
longer, so the start was made. 

They made very much better time in going 
than coming, as they were not hampered by the 
deer, so that Hans reached home about the last 
of April, two or three weeks before the break- 
ing up of the Yukon. 

Few people who have never visited Alaska 
even dream of the mighty volume and astonish- 
ing length of this, the father of waters, in the 
north country. 

The truth is, this mighty river is only second 
to the Mississippi on this continent, and in two 
or three particulars it even surpasses that 
river. It is navigable from White Horse to the 
sea for large river steamers, a distance of over 


160 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


two thousand miles, while the Mississippi is 
navigable for less than two thousand. Much of 
the way it pours its mighty volume between 
banks a mile apart at the rate of ten miles an 
hour. Its delta is twenty miles broad and one 
hundred miles in length, dotted with consider- 
able islands, upon which grow willows thirty 
feet in height. 

But the most interesting thing about the 
Yukon is the manner in which it breaks up. 
Like the Lena River in Asia and the Mackenzie 
in North America, it rises in the south and 
flows northerly for most of its length, so the 
source feels the warm rays of the spring sun 
for two or three weeks before the sunbeams 
begin to melt the ice at the mouth. This seems 
to be directly against all the decrees of nature. 
Nearly all the rest of the great rivers in the 
world flow southerly and open up first at their 
mouths. 

So is it any wonder that the breaking up of 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 161 


the Yukon is one of the majestic and terrible 
spectacles of this north country, almost rivaling 
the Muir Glacier in its destructive force! 

About the first of May — for spring comes 
earlier near the Pacific than on the Atlantic 
seaboard — the tributaries of Lake Bennett 
break up. 

They come grating and grinding, seething 
and boiling, down to the lake, and break that 
body of water up in short order; then trouble 
begins. 

Out of Lake Bennett go thousands of cakes 
of grinding, heaving ice, smashing and break- 
ing everything in its way. 

You can better understand this when you re- 
member that the current of the Yukon is very 
swift. The ice may pile up to-day, mountain 
upon mountain, filling in all the cracks and cran- 
nies with slush, until it has formed a perfect 
dam, but the angry waters are not to be denied 
their right of way to the sea. They will surge 


162 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and toss, foam and hiss, until they are tired of 
it, and then will set back for five or ten miles, 
calling their reinforcements from all the swol- 
len tributaries of the south, and when they be- 
come strong enough they will rush the dam. 

Then there will be sounds like the primeval 
thunders when Thor worked in his mill; and 
this is the mill of God surely but slowly grind- 
ing and leveling down the high mountains of 
this region. 

When the mighty flood, perhaps two miles in 
width and ten in length, finally puts its titanic 
shoulder against the ice-dam something has to 
move. At first it starts slowly, then faster and 
faster, until at last, grinding, thundering, and 
shaking the solid earth, it starts for the sea, 
taking parts of the bank, large trees, and 
mighty bowlders with it — the mill of God, 
grinding, grinding, grinding. 

At Dawson, where the channel is free and 
broad, it rushes by in a ceaseless procession, 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 163 


mighty cakes following one another rapidly, all 
obeying the water’s behest. 

At Circle City, on the Yukon Flats, it 
spreads out into a great lake, shouldering the 
ice out in every direction — mountains and 
mountains of ice piled up in ice palaces, 
stranded, and left high and dry, where they will 
stay until they melt beneath the spring sun- 
beams. 

This mighty river goes on its majestic 
way, battering its banks, bowling over great 
trees and carrying them out to sea, that they 
in turn may be thrown upon the western coasts 
of the continent and piled up as driftwood for 
the poor natives and the whites as well. This 
is the only wood supply at Nome. 

Seething, roaring, and rushing it goes, carry- 
ing tons of silt to build up the islands in the 
delta at its mouth, leveling down this new 
country like a mighty shoveler ; breaking, tear- 
ing, uprooting, dislodging, and despoiling the 


164 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


works of man, but all the time doing the ap- 
pointed work of God. 

About the middle of May, when this majestic 
cataclysm of nature had reached Nulato, Hans 
took Olga and Johanna out to the river to see 
the wonderful sight. 

It was a beautiful spring night, all moonshine 
and star-shimmer, and this added to the un- 
earthly beauty of the ice carnival. 

The swift current had shouldered mighty 
mountains of ice out on to the bank, almost into 
the very streets of the little town. 

The moonbeams fell full upon the ice, shim- 
mering and dancing, sparkling and twinkling, 
until it seemed almost like fairyland. But there 
was also another aspect of the spectacle which 
was anything but fanciful. 

That was the deafening roar of the angry 
waters and the crash and groan of grating, 
breaking, grinding ice. Every few minutes the 
current would topple over some mighty moun- 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 165 


tain of ice which it had builded up only a few 
hours before, and with a crash like the loudest 
thunder it would fall to its doom. 

The waters were covered with foam and 
filled with broken trees and driftwood. The 
river seemed more like a great demoniacal 
monster than the gentle liquid fluid we usually 
see. 

Finally, after a crash more deafening than its 
fellows, little Johanna began to cry, and her 
father took her in his strong arms. 

“ I don’t blame the child,” said her mother. 
“ It is the most awful sight I ever saw. Hans, 
how fearful and wonderful are the works of 
God. This and the soul-sickening storm that 
we experienced at sea when we came over. ’ ’ 

“ I know,” returned Hans, “ but I do not 
feel that way. To me it is grand beyond meas- 
ure. It is God at work.” 

Finally they went silently back to the little 
cabin on the Yukon, where there were peace and 


166 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


comparative quiet, although all through the 
night they could hear echoes of this mill of 
God at work. 

Late in the summer of the second year that 
the Peterson family were in Alaska Hans got 
the gold fever so badly that he could no longer 
restrain himself, so he resigned his posi- 
tion with the government and cast in his for- 
tunes with the seekers after the precious 
metal. 

Many a man goes to Alaska to be a civil en- 
gineer, a teacher, or for commercial reasons. 
He always shakes his head wisely, and says that 
the gold fever will not get him. He is im- 
pervious to such delusions, but nine out of ten 
of them, if they stay in the country five years, 
will hit the trail for the gold fields. 

Hans had always had this idea in the back of 
his head, but even if he had not it would prob- 
ably have been just the same. 

There was red blood in his veins. He was 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 167 


an adventurer by nature, a true son of the old 
Vikings. 

Olga and little Johanna were heartbroken at 
the thought of having him go away into un- 
known regions, into what perils they knew not. 

But Hans was all eagerness. He was full of 
dreams for their wealth. He would come back 
soon, with so much gold that they would be able 
to move to the States and buy a splendid home, 
where they would live in quiet and peace ever 
afterwards. 

But finally Olga consented, and Hans made 
ready for the journey. 

He arranged that the factor at the trading- 
post should look after his wife and child while 
he was gone, and laid in an ample supply of 
provisions for them. Then he saw to his own 
preparations. 

At last the morning for his start was at 
hand. He was to take the noble old starbuck 
with him as a pack animal, and the deer had 


168 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


been so trained that he was as good as a 
burro. 

His pack was a rather heavy one, but he did 
not mind it. There was a deerskin tent and 
cooking utensils, but there were few; a frying- 
pan, a coffee-pot, and a tin plate, spoon, knife, 
and fork. 

Then there was the necessary gold pan for 
washing out the gold, together with shovel, ax, 
and pick. Added to these were a few clothes, 
and a small rifle with which to shoot game. 

Perhaps the most important thing that he 
carried was a compass, for he was to penetrate 
a very little-known region, far to the north and 
east, and his only guide in finding his way 
hither and return would be the compass. 

When all was ready he lifted his little 
daughter in his arms and kissed her, receiv- 
ing her small, warm kiss in return, and held 
his wife in a long, loving embrace; then he 
caught the leading rein with which he had fitted 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 169 

the starbuck and the two were off for what was 
the most exciting and desperate adventure that 
they ever had together. 

They went in a northerly direction to Bat- 
tles, and thence still northerly to Coldfeet. 
Fifty miles more of leisurely travel brought 
them to Lake Chandler, the source of the Col- 
ville River, which point marks the watershed 
between the rivers flowing into the Yukon on 
the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north. 

Hans spent a few days testing sand from the 
bottom of several small creeks that emptied into 
the lake, and then he began slowly to follow 
the Colville towards the Arctic. He turned 
aside several times to examine branches. 

In the wash of two of these creeks he found 
a little gold, but not enough to warrant further 
investigation. 

He followed the Colville clear down to the 
Arctic tundra, which at this point is about fifty 
miles wide. When he saw the level, monotonous 


170 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


expanse of the tundra stretch away as far as 
the eye could reach towards the Arctic Ocean he 
knew that his dream of finding gold on this river 
was futile. He turned and retraced his steps 
back to the watershed between the Arctic and 
the Yukon, then he went along the ridge of 
this watershed, going easterly, and examining 
the sources of all the rivers that flowed both 
northerly and southerly. 

It was hard work, and he spared neither him- 
self nor the starbuck; but this was nothing to 
the hardy deer. To carry a pack of seventy- 
five or a hundred pounds twenty or thirty miles 
a day was but play for him. 

Occasionally Hans stopped to hunt and add 
some ptarmigans to their bill of fare. 

When Hans had traveled about two hundred 
miles to the east, going along the watershed, 
and had about concluded to quit and turn their 
steps homeward before it should get too cold, 
he made the strike. 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 171 


One evening just at dusk they entered a little 
valley that at once attracted Hans’s attention 
for its beauty, as well as its likelihood of being 
good gold country. 

A brawling creek came leaping and plunging 
down through the valley by a series of small 
waterfalls. 

The creek was a very swift stream, and had 
been washing away at the rocks ever since the 
dawn of creation. Hans thought it must have 
washed out some gold if there was any there, 
so they made camp on the bank of the stream, 
but postponed looking for gold until the mor- 
row. 

The young Norwegian usually fell asleep as 
soon as he had crawled into his sleeping-bag, 
but to-night he could not sleep; there seemed 
to be something in the air that hinted of suc- 
cess. He seemed to feel that he was “ hot ” on 
the gold trail. 

He did not wait for breakfast the following 


m KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


morning, but was busy washing out some of the 
sand at the bottom of the creek as soon as he 
could see to do it. 

To his great joy, even the first pan showed 
signs of gold, for when he had washed out all 
the sand and turned the bottom of the pan up 
to the light it was flecked with small yellow 
specks, not very many, but still they were 
there. 

He tried again, and this time with better 
luck, for now the pan was yellow in places. 
Once more he filled the pan with sand, and care- 
fully washed out the dirt and gravel, and this 
time he gave a great shout of triumph, for the 
bottom of his pan was well yellowed over, and 
when he turned it up and poked the yellow 
specks together along one side it made a gen- 
erous pile, perhaps the value of a twenty-dollar 
gold piece. It was not a great strike, but still 
there was gold here. 

After that there was no rest for Hans Peter- 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 173 


son by day or night. As soon as he could see 
in the morning and as late as he could see at 
night he worked feverishly washing out the 
precious metal and stowing it away in small 
buckskin bags which he had brought for the 
purpose. 

Finally he became disgusted with the slow 
process of washing the sand out a panful at 
a time, and contrived a rude sluice-box. 

This was made by digging a shallow ditch on 
a low-lying sand-bar. He placed riffles made of 
bark crosswise in the bottom of the ditch about 
a foot apart. The water was taken in at the 
upper end of this ditch by means of a branch 
ditch. 

He would bring the pan dirt to this impro- 
vised sluice-box and wash it out for several 
hours. Then he would turn the water off from 
the ditch, take up all the rich sediment, and re- 
wash it in the pan. 

He could work a good deal faster in this way, 


174 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and after that the dust in the small bags grew 
more rapidly. 

He also went over his claim very carefully. 
He went back to rimrock and discovered that 
the layer of earth above mother rock was very 
shallow. It would not be a hard claim to work. 

He also sunk a shaft near the stream, work- 
ing away desperately by day and night. He 
only had to go about ten feet to strike bedrock, 
and the first pan that he washed out taken from 
the bedrock set him wild, for the bottom of the 
pan was fairly yellow. He scraped together the 
gold, and estimated it to be worth two hundred 
dollars. It was no Bonanza, or Eldorado, but it 
was a fortune for the poor Norwegian. 

All that day he worked feverishly, washing 
out dirt taken from the bottom of his shaft, and 
the following day he staked out his claim : five 
hundred feet cross-section of the stream, run- 
ning back on each side of the creek to rimrock. 
Then he staked out half a dozen more claims 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 175 


on either side of him, each two hundred and 
fifty feet wide. These he would have his friends 
record for themselves; then he would try and 
purchase the claims from them if he could. 

It was very lucky that he staked out the 
claims and made a map of the country that 
day, for something occurred the next day that 
might have ruined his strike for all time. 

At about noon he was busy in the shaft 
bringing up more dirt, when the starbuck came 
tearing down the side of the little valley, snort- 
ing and whistling as he did when greatly star- 
tled. He charged straight up to the mouth of 
the shaft, and Hans, who was just coming up, 
was nearly knocked back into the bottom of the 
shaft. 

There was cause for all the whistling and 
blowing that the deer was doing, for an Indian 
arrow was sticking in his flank, and blood was 
running freely down his hind leg. 

While Hans was still gazing at him dum- 


176 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


founded and fearful, a half dozen Indians, some 
of them armed with bow and arrow and some 
with rifles, came over the top of the ridge. 

Then in a minute the whole strange happen- 
ing was clear to Hans. They were a hunting 
party and were after the starbuck. 

They evidently thought him caribou, having 
never seen reindeer. 

As they caught sight of the deer they came 
on down the hillside at a run, and one of them 
raised his rifle and fired a bullet, cutting a 
piece out of Hans’s cap. The man had been 
standing behind the deer, and they had not seen 
him. 

But they were not going to kill the starbuck 
before his very eyes, and Hans stepped forward 
and stood between them and the deer, at the 
same time waving his arms and making signs 
for them to keep off. 

They stopped in great confusion when they 
saw him, and made signs in turn which Hans 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 177 


did not understand; but they pointed continu- 
ally at the starbuck, and made signs that they 
would kill him. 

“ Keep off ! ” Hans roared, making more 
frantic signs than ever. They paid no atten- 
tion to him, but charged them, shooting indis- 
criminately at the deer and the man as they 
ran. 

Another bullet inflicted a slight flesh wound 
upon the deer’s belly and Hans had a finger 
broken by a ball that grazed his hand. 

Their plight was getting desperate, so he 
caught the starbuck by the antlers, and man 
and deer made a break for camp, where the rifle 
and his “ forty-four ” were. 

Here Hans left the deer in a deep gulch that 
he had made by digging for gold and waited 
for his assailants. 

He had not long to wait, for in another second 
a bullet kicked up dirt at his feet, and the 
whole party came into sight. 


178 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


The rifle was only a little “ thirty-thirty, , ’ 
but with a lucky aim he got the foremost Indian 
the first shot, and he pitched forward, throw- 
ing his gun as he fell. 

It looked like a repeater, although Hans was 
not sure at that distance. This first lucky shot 
determined the young miner’s course. 

He must put up a terrific fight for a few 
minutes, and perhaps, as they were supersti- 
tious, he might stampede them. Otherwise they 
would not only kill the starbuck, but his master 
as well. 

So he opened on them with his “ forty-four,” 
lying upon his belly, that he might afford as 
little target as possible. He emptied the five 
chambers so rapidly that the echoes followed 
one another in a long, continuous roll. Then 
in a flash he had slipped in his extra cylinder 
and was beginning upon the second round. 

A yell from a savage told him that a second 
ball had found its mark. 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 179 


By the time he had emptied the second cylin- 
der and was reaching for more cartridges they 
broke and fled up the hillside, yelling and point- 
ing as they ran. 

Hans did not wait to see more, but in ten 
seconds his plans were made. They must strike 
camp at once. 

The Indians would consider that he had in- 
terfered with their hunting and had attacked 
them without reason. They would go for re- 
inforcements and would be back shortly to kill 
him, in revenge for their wounded comrades, 
whom he now saw crawling to cover. 

In five minutes he had struck the tent and 
packed it. The frying-pan and the coffee-pot 
were stowed away in the bundle with the tent. 

His sacks of precious gold, which he esti- 
mated at twenty thousand dollars, were safely 
stowed away. The rifle was strapped to the 
pack, and leading the starbuck, who limped 
slightly from his wound, with the “ forty-four ” 


180 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


in his right hand and the leading rein in his 
left, they slunk away into the shadows, going as 
rapidly and silently as they could in the oppo- 
site direction from that in which the Indians 
had appeared. 

They did not stop to pick their way, hut 
plunged down deep gulches and went up 
steep hillsides, the starbuck climbing like a 
goat. 

“ He’d follow me into hell and through it,” 
Hans thought as he noted how faithfully the 
deer scrambled after him, no matter how rough 
a way he chose. 

For three hours they journeyed to the east- 
ward, going at the very best pace they could 
keep up. Hans reeked with sweat, although it 
was very cold and flakes of snow were begin- 
ning to fall — the first of the season. 

By three o’clock it began to get dusk, and 
they halted to make camp. They had covered 
all the distance they could for that day, perhaps 


THE LURE OF THE GOLD TRAIL 181 


ten miles. If the snow would only keep falling 
the Indians could not follow their trail, so per- 
haps they were safe from pursuit. 

They had pitched their tent on a stream 
which should flow, according to Hans’s reckon- 
ing, into the Yukon, a hundred and fifty miles 
to the south; it flowed north instead, which 
greatly troubled and puzzled Hans. So he 
reached in his pocket for the compass, but no 
compass was there. 

He searched his other pockets in quick suc- 
cession, but it was gone. 

He had lost it during their flight; and one 
thing the river flowing in the wrong way proved 
beyond a doubt — he was lost. 

Lost in this vast wilderness, somewhere be- 
tween the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean ! 

A storm was coming up, there was only about 
two days ’ provisions, and he was not as warmly 
clad as he should have been for winter. His 
ammunition was also low. The ten shots that 


182 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

he had fired to save the starbuck had left him 
but half a dozen more cartridges. 

His plight was desperate. What would he 
not give for the compass; then he would soon 
get out of this wilderness. 

He was due at home, and had been for a week, 
and he was lost, with only the stars to guide him. 

“ Lost,” moaned the winds in the spruces 
nearby. “ Lost,” shrieked the gale as it whis- 
tled down the gulf ; and the snow sifted 
silently down upon the lone man and the silent 
beast in this the great silence of nature. These 
two alone in the wilderness. 

Then a fearful thought came to Hans. If 
he was to have his back to a tree and be fighting 
for his life, perhaps fighting his last fight, there 
would be no one to answer and come with help, 
even if he had breath enough left to cry out. 
He was alone. 

“ Alone,” moaned the wind; “ alone, alone, 
alone. ’ ’ 


IX 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 

It was anything but a comfortable night that 
Hans spent alone with the thought that he was 
lost in this Yukon wilderness, and the sounds 
of the storm raging outside his tent did not 
tend to raise his spirits. 

He had camped upon the banks of the stream, 
the stream that worried him by flowing the 
wrong way. His tent was pitched in a clump of 
small spruces, which afforded a little shelter, 
but even then it was cold and cheerless, for he 
had no sheet-iron stove to warm it on this trip. 

But the old starbuck cared not for wind or 
cold. 

He had found a luxurious bed of moss just 
before dark, and he now stood under a spruce 

near the tent munching his cud contentedly. 

183 


184 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Hans was up the next morning with the very 
first streak of light, which at this time of the 
year came at about nine o’clock. He hur- 
ried through his breakfast of half rations, 
as his provisions were very low, and im- 
mediately after the cheerless meal struck 
the trail, or rather made one, through the 
snow, which was now knee-deep and steadily 
falling. 

He determined to follow the stream for half 
a day and see where it might lead. There was 
no sun, and nothing else to guide him. The 
moss on the spruces was not pronounced enough 
for him to determine the direction in that way, 
and there was no decided lean of the tim- 
ber. In this desolate, wind-swept country it 
merely leaned away from the prevailing wind, 
and that was all. So he plodded wearily on, 
going where he knew not, not sure but what this 
stream would lead them further from home and 
nearer to the Arctic tundra; but this was the 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


185 


only way in which he could travel in a given 
direction. 

About noon, when he had covered perhaps 
five miles, he saw to his great joy that the 
stream was doubling back on itself. They had 
covered a great loop and were once more head- 
ing in the direction which Hans thought south. 
This probably explained the whole matter. 
Perhaps they were not lost, but he could not 
be sure. 

The question of being lost partly dispelled, 
Hans felt better, but he soon remembered an- 
other anxiety. His provisions were almost 
gone. He had a can of salmon, a can of beans, 
coffee enough for two meals, and that was all. 
He should have stopped and done some hunt- 
ing the week before, but he was so excited with 
the mining that all else was forgotten. 

Now perhaps he might have to pay the pen- 
alty. 

He opened these two last cans for dinner, 


186 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and ate sparingly from them, making his coffee 
very weak but exceedingly hot. Then they re- 
sumed the weary march. 

By nightfall, which came at about three 
o’clock, Hans estimated that they were perhaps 
three miles further south than in the morning, 
having traveled twelve miles about the circle to 
make that distance. 

That night he ate all but just enough of his 
provisions for breakfast. 

They spent another cold, cheerless night, and 
were up again at dawn and ready for the day’s 
march. It had stopped snowing, but there was 
now about two feet of snow, which made it 
hard traveling. 

Hans had eaten the last of his provisions for 
breakfast; but the river was now running in 
the right direction, and he started off in better 
spirits than he had known for the past two 
days. 

He would knock over a ptarmigan if he had 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


187 


luck and not go hungry for dinner, and sure 
enough he did. A bird was most accommo- 
dating, for it flew up just in front of him and 
lit in a spruce, where it sat cocking its head on 
one side, eying him curiously. It was lucky 
that it was so good a mark, as he had no ammu- 
nition left for the rifle, and he could not shoot 
close with the u forty-four.” 

He ate half the ptarmigan for dinner and 
saved the rest for supper, and was on the trail 
again. 

About the middle of the afternoon he came 
out into a wide valley which was rather marshy. 
Moss grew sparingly here, and they stopped to 
let the starbuck feed. He had been nibbling 
away but a few minutes when a strange sound 
pierced the silence, a cry that made him throw 
up his head and snort and Hans look anx- 
ious. It was not a loud sound, but there was a 
menace in it for both man and beast — a danger 
that both were quick to recognize. 


188 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

It started rather low down, but mounted rap- 
idly, growing in volume and fierceness until it 
reached its highest note, then died slowly away 
in a note as desolate as the cry of a lost soul. 

It was a queer blending of pathos, anger, 
and dire threat. 

The starbuck had first heard it when he was 
Little Lightfoot feeding with his dam at twi- 
light on the edge of the tundra in Norway — 
on that night when the great herd of Anders 
Poulsen had fought the gray pack to a stand- 
still. 

Hans had heard the cry often, both in Norway 
and Alaska. It was a sound that he did not 
much fear when his belt was well filled with 
cartridges, but now his ammunition was very 
low — only five cartridges for the 1 ‘ forty-four ’ ’ 
and none for the rifle. 

While he was considering this grave fact an- 
other howl answered the first, also behind and 
a little to one side. Then it was taken up far 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


189 


ahead of them in the direction they were trav- 
eling, and then again to the left and the 
right. 

The starbuck came snorting and blowing to 
his master, the long hair upon his neck and 
back erect with fright and anger. 

“ We are in for it, old starbuck/ ’ said Hans, 
rubbing the deer’s nose. “ They are after us 
sure as preaching. You had better stick close 
to me if you know when your hide is on tight 
and your bones are covered with meat. Them 
devils mean business! ” 

He caught the leading rein tightly in his 
right hand, and they plodded wearily on their 
way, the new danger that lurked in ambush for 
them on all sides lending gloom to the dreary 
scene. 

They did not see anything more of the wolves 
until after supper, although Hans knew they 
were following his trail. 

Just before the light faded he knocked over 


190 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


another ptarmigan, so did not have to go sup- 
perless to bed. 

He did not dare put up the tent, as that would 
leave the starbuck outside to the mercy of the 
wolves. 

So he cut a large quantity of boughs and built 
his campfire close to a small spruce, to which 
he tied the deer. He made the campfire much 
larger than usual, and slept with his feet to- 
wards it. He would abandon the tent on the 
morrow. It would go to feed the wolves. 

He noted while he was getting ready to 
crawl into his sleeping-bag that the starbuck 
was very restless, and snorted and stamped. 
At first he could not locate the thing that dis- 
turbed him, but he finally made it out: two 
phosphorous eyes, gleaming malignantly 
through the darkness. Then he looked in an- 
other direction where he had heard the snow 
crunch, and there was another pair, glowing 
with hunger and hatred like the first. 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


191 


He turned to still another direction, and made 
out still a third pair. It was like counting the 
stars at eventide. At first you think there are 
none, but the longer you look the more you see. 
Hans finally counted a dozen pairs of eyes, all 
hungry, all watchful, and all eying himself and 
the starbuck steadily, like something that they 
intended to make a supper on soon. They were 
very patient, although desperately hungry. 

Spite of himself Hans could not sleep because 
of the circle of eyes that inclosed the camp on 
every side. 

So he fell to watching them and trying to dis- 
cover new ones. When the fire died down the 
wolves would steal slowly nearer, belly to earth, 
and then he could make out dark forms about 
the gleaming eyes, forms that crouched in the 
snow, watching, watching, watching the man- 
creature and the big deer. 

Well, he determined that they should have 
the meat of neither as long as he could fight. 


192 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


So he finally went to sleep, relying on the star- 
buck to arouse him if they came too near. 

Once the snorting and stamping of the rein- 
deer awakened Hans, and he found that the 
wolves had drawn in much closer, so he threw 
more fagots on the fire, and the eyes that 
burned themselves like coals slunk away into 
the darkness. 

Three more times that night Hans was 
aroused by the snorting, whistling, and stamp- 
ing of the old starbuck, when the circle of hun- 
gry eyes had drawn in too close, and each 
time he replenished the fire and drove them 
back. 

Both the beleaguered ones were glad when 
the first gray streak of dawn appeared and the 
gray shapes stole away into the gloom of the 
spruce trees. 

Hans went without his breakfast this morn- 
ing, for the very simple reason that there was 
nothing to eat. 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


193 


They took the trail very early and plod- 
ded monotonously along until noon, follow- 
ing the stream, as they had been doing ever 
since the discovery of the loss of the com- 
pass. 

About noon Hans tried a shot at a snowshoe 
rabbit that squatted under a dead spruce, but 
the rabbit was so nearly the color of the snow 
and the man’s hands were so numb from the 
long exposure without gloves that he missed, 
while his dinner skurried away with great 
leaps. 

This left him but three cartridges, and he 
made up his mind that if the starbuck should 
try to break away from him and run for it he 
would shoot him, as he felt sure that the wolves 
would overhaul him in an hour or two in the 
deep snow, so it would be a mercy to shoot him ; 
besides it would give Hans something to eat. 
His conscience recoiled at the thought of eat- 
ing the faithful starbuck, but his stomach ached 


194 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and gnawed with hunger, and this made the cold 
doubly hard to bear. 

“ It's all right, old companion,” he said, 
patting the deer affectionately on the shoulder, 
‘ ‘ as long as you and I stick together. 

“ I’ll stand by you, and we will die like 
brothers, but if you go back on me and try to 
run I shall have to plug you. ’ ’ 

But the great deer had no notion of running. 
In fact, he felt, in his dim animal way, that his 
only salvation lay in this man-creature, his mas- 
ter. He was powerful. He had the wonderful 
fire stick, and in some way he would destroy 
the wolves when he was ready. It made a dif- 
ference with the old starbuck because he could 
not summon a hundred bucks to fight with him. 

Many a time, when he was a half -wild rein- 
deer and ran with the great Yukon herd as its 
leader, he had marshaled his forces just as he 
had seen the leader of Anders Poulsen’s herd 
do long ago in Norway. Many a time he and 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


195 


his little army of bucks had fought the gray 
pack to a standstill under the pitiless Arctic 
stars. But now it was different. He and his 
master were alone. The woods were full of 
wolves, and every hair upon the old fighter’s 
back tingled with rage and fear. He would put 
up a good fight when the time came. 

Just as the gray gloom which answers for 
day at this season was fading into darkness a 
ptarmigan flew up into a tree just ahead of 
them. Hans could see the bird quite plainly. 

Should he risk a shot! He was desperately 
hungry. It did not seem as though he could 
travel to-morrow without food. He weighed all 
the chances. He had three cartridges. He 
would need them all when the wolves closed in 
on himself and the starbuck. 

Finally his hunger got the better of his judg- 
ment, and he raised the “ forty-four ” and fired. 

To his great joy the bird fluttered down into 
the snow dead, and he started forward to get 


196 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


his prize. He had not taken two steps when a 
gray figure shot out of the bush within six rods 
of him and snatched his supper. It was one of 
his enemies from the gray pack. 

In uncontrollable anger, and without weigh- 
ing the consequence of what he did, Hans took 
a snap shot at the gray thief. 

The bullet kicked up a cloud of snow a hun- 
dred feet beyond the wolf, while he skulked 
away into the thicket with the ptarmigan, him- 
self unscathed. 

Hans groaned aloud in his despair. He had 
but one cartridge left. What a fool he had 
been! 

Silently he led the starbuck a dozen rods 
further down the stream and chose their camp- 
ing-place with great care. The wolves were fol- 
lowing him so closely that he dared not go 
further. They must have a bright campfire at 
once. 

There was a tall bowlder and two large 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


197 


spruce trees at their back, and a large dead 
spruce near at hand for fuel. 

He tied the starbuck — but there was really 
no need of that, for he could not have been 
driven away from his master — and then began 
felling the tree. Even before he had brought 
it down the circle of eyes had begun to form, 
and they came in much earlier and nearer than 
the night before. 

When he had kindled a bright blaze they 
drew back, but not as far as the previous night. 
He could see dark forms just out of reach of 
the outer fringe of light. They were certainly 
less afraid of him and more sure of their prey. 

The starbuck continually pawed, and snorted, 
and whistled, while his usually mild eyes burned 
as red as the coals in the campfire. He would 
fight if he had to, but would much rather have 
run away. 

By nine o’clock they had come in so close 
that he could see them plainly at the edge of the 


198 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


firelight. They were very poor, judging from 
the way in which their bellies were gaunted up, 
but they were very patient, for they lay there, 
belly to earth, watching, watching, watching 
with hungry eyes the man and the deer. They 
could afford to be patient, for they would eat 
soon. Hans felt this himself as they drew 
still nearer towards the firelight. 

Then he thought with a terrible pang at his 
heart of the cabin on the Yukon and the brave 
wife and the sweet little girl who would watch 
and wait for him in vain. 

They were working in rapidly. Something 
must be done to check them. He could not waste 
his last shot ; that would kill but one wolf, and 
what was one out of twenty? 

Then a bright thought came to him. They 
were afraid of the fire, and he would give them 
some of it to eat. So he picked a fagot about 
two feet long which was burning at one end and 
sent it hissing and sputtering into their midst. 



He Picked Up a Fagot Which Was Burning at One End and 
Sent It Hissing and Sputtering Into Their Midst 







A CIRCLE OF EYES 


199 


There was the smell of burning hair and a 
yelp of pain, at which Hans felt a savage joy. 

“ Come again if you want to,” the man 
growled; “ I’ll feed you fire all night if you 
want it. ’ ’ 

He did not think that they would so soon 
accept the invitation, but in fifteen minutes they 
were back, and he gave them another brand; 
but his aim was not good this time, and they 
merely jumped aside, and were back again in a 
few seconds eying him hungrily. 

After that it was one continuous fight all 
night long with the firebrands. Constantly he 
replenished the campfire, and cut short fagots 
which he could hurl into the pack as fast as 
they caught fire. 

Occasionally he singed a wolf, when there 
was a yelp of pain, but more often they dodged, 
and were back again watching and waiting hun- 
grily. So, spite of all Hans could do, the circle 
of eyes drew steadily in upon him, and the gray 


200 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


forms crawled, belly to earth, closer and closer 
to their prey. 

At daybreak he had hopes that they would 
go away, as they had done the days before, but 
here he was disappointed. When the gray 
dawn lit the forlorn scene there they were, sit- 
ting in a gray, expectant circle, entirely hedging 
in the camp. 

When he started to get more fagots they 
sprang up and advanced towards him, showing 
their fangs hungrily, and he returned hastily 
to the campfire. Clearly here was where the 
last fight would be made. 

He would keep them off as long as he could 
with the fire, and what then? 

All the forenoon he gathered the fagots that 
remained within reach, and as soon as they had 
caught threw them into the pack, but by noon 
he saw with horror that his wood supply was 
nearly gone. The campfire was getting dim. It 
would burn barely half an hour longer. 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


201 


With this thought a desperate calm came to 
Hans, and he did not fear death any more. 
The only thing that troubled him was the 
thought of those on the Yukon, his wife and 
child. 

Who would care for them? All his precious 
gold that he had gained with so much toil would 
be lost. What was it good for after all? Why 
had he risked so much for it? 

Well, the thing was done. He would not 
mourn. They would not take his life without 
paying a good price. 

Then his thought of two days before, when 
he had first discovered the loss of the compass, 
came to him. What if he were to have his back 
against a tree, and be fighting his last fight, 
and should call out in his extremity, and no 
human being in the whole world should hear? 
Well, just that very thing was going to happen 
in about half an hour. 

Hans sat and watched with a terrible fas- 


202 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


cination his last fagots catch and slowly burn 
out, while the gray pack drew in closer. 

He would not throw any more fagots at them. 
The fire would serve him better by burning. 

He reached over to the starbuck, who had 
pressed in close to the fire beside his master, 
and rubbed his nose affectionately. 

“ Looks like the last account, old buck, don’t 
it? Well, we will try and kill a few of them.” 

The old veteran of many a wilderness battle 
spread his forefeet well apart, lowered his 
horns of many branches, and whistled viciously. 

“ They will be too many for us, old star- 
buck, but some of them will go along with you 
and me, I’m a thinking.” 

Even w T hile the man spoke the leader of the 
pack, a huge dog-wolf, bounded close to the fire, 
which had nearly died out, and snapped at Hans, 
his jaws clicking like a steel trap. 

Hans thought he could not use his one car- 
tridge to better advantage than on him, so he 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


203 


took deliberate aim between the brute’s eyes 
and pulled the trigger. 

To his utter disgust there was merely the 
sharp click of the hammer, but no report. A 
dozen times he tried, but this one out of a 
thousand cartridges was imperfect, and his 
4 4 forty-four ” was useless. 

He hurled the weapon at the wolf’s head with 
all his might, and took up the ax. That at least 
would not miss fire. 

The advance of the old leader was a signal 
to the pack, and in five minutes half the pack 
were advancing and retreating, springing and 
snapping. 

One sprung full at the starbuck, who caught 
him fairly on his many-pronged antlers, and 
he struggled back with a yelp, and Hans saw 
that the antler point was bloody. 

44 Good, old starbuck!” he called. 44 First 
blood for you.” 

The wound was evidently deep down in the 


204 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


wolf’s coat, and the rest of the pack were too 
excited with the man and the deer to notice it, 
or they would have turned upon their wounded 
comrade. 

Again the great leader sprang at Hans, and 
this time the Norwegian’s blow fell true. The 
ax caught the wolf fairly in the side of the 
head. 

He sprang backward and fell over on his side. 

This was a signal to the rest, and they piled 
upon him, mad with hunger and jealousy. 

A dozen jaws were fixed in the old leader’s 
body at once, and they tore him to bits as easily 
as though he had been made of cotton batting. 

Hans shivered, and a chill like death crept 
over him. He did not mind dying like a Chris- 
tian, but to be torn to pieces like carrion — it 
was awful! 

“ God be good to my wife and child,” he 
prayed. ‘ ‘ God be good to them. ’ ’ 

In ten minutes’ time it was all over with the 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


205 


old wolf, and they were springing and snapping 
at the beleaguered man again. 

He aimed blow after blow at them, but they 
kept just out of reach, and he got in only one 
glancing blow. 

If he could only kill another wolf, perhaps 
they would get sick of it. 

So when the next wolf sprang he reached far 
out with the ax and struck with all his might. 

To his utter horror the helve slipped in his 
half-numbed hand, and the ax flew a dozen feet 
beyond the outskirts of the pack. 

It was all over. They might come and get 
him and the starbuck as soon as they wished 
now. 

But, like a drowning man, when they did 
surge in upon him a minute later, he fought 
desperately. The first two he caught under the 
jaw with well-directed kicks and sent them to 
the rear, but others took their places. 

He kicked and struck with his bare fists like 


206 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


a madman. He could see over their heads the 
old starbuck down on his knees fighting des- 
perately. He too was game. 

But he could only keep the pack at bay for a 
few seconds. 

His clothes were torn until he was nearly 
naked. He received a terrible gash in the leg 
and another in the arm. Then his foot slipped 
and, still fighting, he went down and the gray 
pack swarmed over him. 

In the last moment of conscious life, when 
the most precious thing that we possess is 
about to be taken from us, there is an instinct 
in man, and in all the animals as well, to call 
out to some power beyond ourselves for succor. 

The tiniest mouse and the largest wolf, or 
the bravest man, all possess this instinct in com- 
mon. Whether they understand it or not, it is 
a rude prayer for help. 

So when the gray pack surged over Hans, 
and he felt that his last hour had struck, he ut- 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


207 


tered a wild, despairing cry that echoed away 
and away through the desolate woods. 

Not that he expected anyone to come to his 
assistance, but he merely obeyed the impulse 
of nature. 

He felt pain in every part of his body and 
loud noises in his ears. These noises were 
fairly deafening and seemed all about him. 
Then the pain and the noises grew fainter and 
fainter, and he knew no more. 

The next thing Hans remembered of that 
never-to-be-forgotten day he was lying upon a 
camp blanket, beside a bright fire, and his head 
was in the lap of a man, while the nozzle of a 
whisky bottle was being thrust into his mouth. 

u He is too far gone to take it,” he heard a 
voice say, and it sounded a thousand miles 
away. He thought he would let them know he 
was not too far gone to take it, so he gulped 
down a swallow. He could not speak, but this 
was his reply to his rescuers. 


208 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Then for a long time Hans lay very still, 
while tender hands bound up his wounds and 
gave him more whisky. He watched them as 
though they had been administering to some- 
one else. 

Perhaps it was his funeral. He did not know. 

Then with a snap his brain cleared, and all 
his pains came back to him, and he could hear 
more distinctly. 

4 4 He’s coming round, Shorty; damned ef I 
don’t believe he is,” he heard one of the men 
say. 

Then the man called Shorty came and stood 
over Hans. 

“ Well, stranger,” he said kindly. “ Do you 
hear me! ” 

“ Yes, I hear you,” answered Hans. 
“ Didn’t they get me, or am I dead? ” 

“No, they didn’t get you, but they came 
damned near it. 

“We got four ov them, though.” 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


209 


Then Hans lapsed into silence. He was so 
tired. 

By and by he motioned the man to come near, 
and he came and bent over him. 

“ Did they get the starbuck? ” he whispered. 
‘ i I mean the deer. ’ ’ 

“ No,” said the man, “ but we is going to 
kill him for breakfast. We are rather short 
for grub, and hell be all right.” 

Hans sprang up to a sitting position, as 
though propelled by steel springs. “ No you 
ain’t,” he gasped. “ He is mine. 

“ He and me stick by one another like 
brothers. You can’t kill him,” he moaned. 
Then he collapsed and fell back again. 

By and by he came round, and motioned to 
Shorty to come to him. 

“ You ain’t going to kill the starbuck, are 
you ? ” he whispered as feebly and tremulously 
as a child. 

“ Gol durn it, no,” replied the man gruffly 


210 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


but kindly. u We wouldn’t kill him for the 
world. ’ ’ 

“ They ain’t going to kill the starbuck,” mur- 
mured Hans, and he fell asleep. 

The following day Hans was so far recovered 
that he and his rescuers started for the Yukon, 
which was only fifty miles away, for Hans had 
wandered about in a circle and made part of 
the return journey home without knowing it. 

On the way down the party of three belated 
prospectors who had rescued Hans told him of 
how they had heard his agonized cry for help 
and had run to his assistance, as Shorty said, 
‘ ‘ like the devil was after them. ’ ’ 

They had reached the scene just as the pack 
swarmed over Hans, and their “ forty-fours ” 
had done the rest. 

Two days of easy traveling brought the little 
party to the Yukon, and when Hans saw the 
long stretch of smooth ice and knew that this 
fine road stretched all the way to the little 


A CIRCLE OF EYES 


£11 


cabin at Nulato his heart gave a great bound 
of joy. 

At the Methodist Mission he procured a 
sledge, and in an hour after having made the 
purchase he was gliding down the Yukon as 
only the starbuck could draw him. 

“ Home, ,, sang the clacking hoofs of the rein- 
deer, ‘ ‘ Home, ’ ’ sang the runners of the sledge, 
but Hans’s heart, overflowing with gratitude 
for his escape, and for the fortune which he 
was carrying back to Olga and little Johanna, 
sang “ Home ” loudest of all. 


X 


THE GREAT RACE 

It is safe to say that there were not two hap- 
pier people in Alaska than Olga and little Jo- 
hanna when Hans and the faithful starbuck 
appeared at the log cabin at Nulato some four 
or five days later. For the past two weeks 
they had been suffering horrible suspense. 
Hans had promised to be home that much 
earlier, and every hour the brave woman and 
the little girl had watched for him all day long, 
and had begrudged the long, dark night when 
they could no longer see the trail leading to the 
cabin. 

But they made it all up during that winter. 
What cheerful, gleeful parties they had by the 
roaring wood stove, while Hans told of his rich 

gold claim away to the north; and little Johanna 
212 


A GREAT RACE 


213 

was never tired of listening to the thrilling 
story of the fight with the Indians and the mar- 
velous escape from the wolves. The starbuck 
was almost as much of a hero in her eyes as 
was her father, and she often stole away to the 
shed which adjoined the cabin to pet him and 
to tell him what a brave old deer he was, all 
of which the starbuck understood perfectly, or 
if he did not he kept the fact to himself, so his 
ignorance was not even guessed. 

One day when Hans was down to the trading- 
post talking with the factor he discovered a 
lot of government maps of Alaska, and from pa- 
tient study of them he was enabled to trace his 
journey of the summer before. He finally de- 
cided that his claim was located on the middle 
branch of the Chandler River, and this was 
where it was finally recorded as lying. 

While they talked and planned about the red- 
hot stove during the long Arctic night, Hans 
told his family of his wish to take them all up 


214 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


to the claim the following summer, where he 
would build a new log cabin and work the claim 
until he had made a fortune for them. When 
that had been accomplished they would move 
down to the States and purchase a fine home 
in Michigan, where several kinsfolk were lo- 
cated. The latter portion of Hans’s plan 
pleased Olga more than all the rest, for this 
wild country was very lonesome and fearful for 
a woman like her, and she did not wish her 
little daughter to grow up without the com- 
pany of other little girls and the advantages 
of good schools. So it was agreed that as soon 
as the going was good in the spring the move 
should be made. 

But there was another turn in the fortunes 
of the Peterson family, in which the starbuck 
played a most important part, that occurred in 
April, and this story would not be complete 
without it. 

The clubroom and lounging place for the men 


A GREAT RACE 


215 


of the little community was down at the post, 
and Hans spent many pleasant evenings there 
playing cards and listening to miners ’ and 
traders ’ experiences. 

About the middle of February there had 
come down the Yukon a wonderful dog-team of 
malamutes, driven by one Big Alec. 

What his other name was no one knew, or 
ever asked. If a man is out of jail, and the 
police are not after him, he is accepted as all 
right in this rough country. 

He was a French Canuck, and had come to 
Dawson the winter before, coming across coun- 
try from the Northwest Territory. It was sup- 
posed that the territory had been too hot for 
him, and so he had moved to Dawson. 

He was a gambler by profession and had 
picked up quite a fortune at the roulette tables 
and the faro banks at Dawson. He had been 
mixed up in a gun-play affair just before the 
river closed for navigation, and the mounted 


216 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 

police had handed him a small card the day 
after the affair. 

This card was a polite invitation to leave 
Dawson by the next boat, with the alternative 
of arrest if he stayed. 

He knew well what it would mean to be ap- 
prehended, with his record in the Northwest 
Territory, so he wisely took the boat. 

He had spent a part of the winter at Circle 
City, but here he had also received a polite in- 
vitation from the marshal to move on, so he had 
journeyed down the river to Nulato. 

He was a bully and blowhard, and also pos- 
sessed of great strength. This, coupled with 
his deadly use of his “ forty-four,’ ’ made him 
a bad man in a mix-up. 

His recreation was driving dog-teams, and 
he possessed two of the fastest teams in Alaska : 
the fine team of six malamutes that he had 
driven to the town and another team of huskies 
which were still at Fort Yukon, but were ex- 


A GREAT RACE 


217 


pected down the river soon, driven by his friend 
and partner, Antone Dubois. 

Hans first met Alec one night at the post 
about the middle of April 

He was blowing about his dog-teams, saying 
that they were the fastest team that ever drew 
sledge. He punctuated his observation with 
many oaths and loud blows of his fists on the 
table. 

Finally someone mentioned the reindeer that 
were being imported into Alaska, and told of 
Hans’s famous starbuck and of the great run 
that his dam had made in old Norway. 

At the conclusion of the narrative Big Alec 
burst into a coarse laugh. 

“ Reindeer, py gar. They tarn snails. By 
gar, my tog-team run further and faster on tree 
leg than any tarn reindeer that ever live. Ha, 
ha, ha! ” 

At this taunt Hans’s blood ran hot This 
strain of reindeer meant so much to him and 


218 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


his family that they were almost sacred. Next 
to his family he loved the starbuck best of 
anything in the world. Hans was a strong, hot- 
headed fellow, with a heart as tender as that 
of a woman, and the taunts of this blackguard 
roiled him beyond endurance. 

At first he could not control himself to speak 
he was so incensed, and Big Alec interpreted 
his silence as an acquiescence in his state- 
ment. 

“ What you tink, pig Tutchman? ” he jeered 
at Hans. “ You tink so too, by gar? ” 

“ I don’t think anything of the kind,” roared 
Hans, his temper getting the best of him. “ I 
have got a reindeer over at my shed that can 
outrun any team of yelping mongrels that ever 
drew a sledge.” 

“ Py gar, hear him; talk mighty cheap. You 
got no money that say your old teer can peat my 
tog? ” 

There was deep silence in the room again, and 


A GREAT RACE 


219 


all waited to see what Hans ’s next move would 
be. He was not a betting man; the fleetness 
of his reindeer was questioned. He could see 
from the looks of the crowd that nearly all 
concurred in Alec’s boast that his dog-team 
could outrun the reindeer; but they did not 
know the starbuck. 

Again Big Alec repeated his taunt. “ Py gar, 
you got no money what say your teer can run 
better than one cow. I tink him one cow, any- 
way. He run like a pig, py gar. A pig ; ha, ha, 
ha! ” 

This was more than Hans could stand. He 
did not see the trap into which the gambler 
was leading him, and it is doubtful if he would 
have heeded it, in any event. Every drop of 
blood in his great body was mad. His rein- 
deer who had stood by him in so many straits 
was being made fun of. 

“ Yes, by thunder! ” he roared, “ I have got 
five thousand dollars in dust that says my rein- 


220 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


deer can outrun your dog-team for any dis- 
tance you are a mind to mention.” 

Big Alec’s eyes gleamed with savage triumph. 
He had trapped his man. 

‘ * Py gar, I take you, ’ 9 he said. ‘ ‘ What will 
the tistance pe? ” 

“ thousand miles! ’’roared Hans promptly. 

Alec gasped. “I no run my tog-team a tou- 
sand miles to please any Tutchman. I run a 
hundred miles. Fifty mile town the river and 
pack . 9 ’ 

“ All right,” replied Hans. “ Fifty miles 
down the river and return.” 

So it was arranged. Hans went over to the 
cabin and brought over five thousand dollars’ 
worth of his hard-earned dust, and Alec de- 
posited an equal amount in gold pieces, and the 
details of the race were arranged. 

They would race to Ambia, fifty miles down 
the river, and return. Here the wiley Alec 
again got the advantage of Hans, for he in- 


A GREAT RACE 




sisted that one hundred miles was too far to 
race a single dog-team and that he must be al- 
lowed two teams, running them in relays. Hans 
was most anxious to show what his reindeer 
could do, and so finally agreed to this modifica- 
tion of the original plan. 

The little town was in an uproar, and every- 
one wanted to help about bringing the big race 
off. 

A dozen Eskimos and Indians went down the 
river with half a dozen sledges and broke the 
trail where the ice on the river was not en- 
tirely free of snow. 

Every ten miles they built a big campfire, 
where two or three of the Eskimos or Indians 
were stationed to give assistance in case of 
accident. 

The day after the big bet had been made 
Antone Dubois appeared with Alec ’s other dog- 
team, and the following day he drove it down to 
Ambia, to have it in readiness for the run back. 


222 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


The betting, as is usually the case in this 
free-handed country where fortunes are made 
and lost by the turn of a card, ran high. The 
odds were three to one on the dogs. 

Reindeer were comparatively new in this 
north country, and their speed and endurance 
in a long race was not even suspected. 

Up to this time all those who had heard of 
the celebrated run of Hans Peterson’s faithful 
hind in Norway put it down as a yarn, but Hans 
determined they should have their eyes opened. 

Three days after the bet had been made 
everything was in readiness. Hans had sent 
two of his Eskimo friends down to Ambia with 
a second sledge, to use in case of accident, and 
everything that could be done by both parties 
had been done. 

Big Alec had placed every dollar that he was 
worth on his two dog-teams, so the loss of this 
race meant financial ruin to him. 

On the fourth morning after the wager had 


A GREAT RACE 


223 


been made every inhabitant was out with the 
first gray streak of dawn, for at sunrise the 
race was to be started. 

Big Alec with much swagger took his position 
with his splendid team of malamutes. He 
laughed and joked with the standers-by. He 
would show the “ Tutchman ” what an Alaskan 
dog-team would do. 

Hans, on the other hand, was very quiet. His 
face was pale and determined. This race meant 
a whole lot to him besides the five thousand dol- 
lars of his dust. It meant that the value of 
the reindeer for Alaska would double if he 
could win the race. Besides he hated the bully 
and braggart, as did all other honest men, and 
wanted to see him discomfited. 

The old starbuck shuffled slowly down to the 
starting line, just as though nothing important 
was on foot, and stood waiting the next move of 
his master. 

Alec’s six powerful malamutes were yelping 


224 * KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


and tugging at their breastplates, all eagerness 
to be off. 

Alec had his heavy driving- whip coiled up in 
his hand, ready at the appointed signal to throw 
it into the team. 

“ Are you ready? ” came the clear voice of 
Mr. Adams, of the post. Then the sharp crack 
of a “ forty-four ” rang out on the morning 
air. 

Alec flung his heavy whip viciously into the 
team, crying, “ Mush, you tevils; mush, or, by 
gar, I kill you all.” 

He was a dog-killer and not a sympathetic 
driver ; but he could be trusted to drive as hard 
and as fast as sheer brute strength could push 
a team. 

With a chorus of glad yelps and two or 
three snarls, for the whip hissed and bit their 
faces, the splendid team was off, running like 
the wind. 

On the other hand, there was no demonstra- 


A GREAT RACE 


225 


tion about Hans’s start. He merely slapped 
the starbuck gently with the rein and called to 
him in a cheery voice. 

But what would not that steely four hun- 
dred pounds of muscles and sinews do for 
him? 

The starbuck started at a rather slow trot, 
but each moment slipped into a faster gait, so 
that all noticed when they rounded a bend in 
the river a mile below that the starbuck was 
only about a hundred feet behind the dog-team, 
and running easily. 

After the first dramatic start, when he knelt 
upon the sled, Alec lay face down, while Hans 
sat, as is the custom of the Lapp driver. 

Every mile or so Alec would glance over his 
shoulder to see his rival. He always expected 
to discover that he had left him far behind, 
but he was always following closely, keeping up 
the pace like a machine. 

Then Alec would turn his attention to the 


226 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


team and try, by throwing his whip among them 
and cursing, to get more speed. 

In these bursts he would often draw a hun- 
dred yards ahead ; but the team was always ex- 
hausted after these spurts, and Hans would 
soon overhaul them. There was a difference 
in the driving of the two men. Alec was spas- 
modic, while Hans never varied. 

They passed the ten-mile station not a hun- 
dred feet apart, and the Eskimos shouted for 
the reindeer and shook their fists at Alec. 

At the twenty-mile bonfire there was no 
change, and Alec was furious, for try as he 
would he could not shake off the steady, per- 
sistent trot of the reindeer; but he flattered 
himself that it would be different on the re- 
turn run, for then he would have a fresh team, 
while the deer must be ‘ 6 all in. ’ ’ 

Just after they had passed the thirty-mile 
station there was a strip in the river where the 
current was swift. The winter had been a very 


A GREAT RACE 


m 

mild one, and the Eskimos had reported that it 
was open at this point. 

Hans, who was sitting np, could see further 
ahead than Alec, who lay prone on the sled, but 
he did not notice this open place in the river 
until they were almost on it. He cried out a 
warning to Alec, who was about a hundred 
feet ahead. His first impulse had been to let 
him plunge into the river and go to the devil, 
but thought of the fine dog-team caused him to 
give the warning. 

Alec reached out and caught his wheel dog by 
the hind legs and threw him. The animal 
turned and snapped, but he held on, and the 
wheel dog was dragged in the traces; but this 
brake of the dragging dog was not enough to 
prevent the mishap, for four of the team 
plunged into the river, while Alec held on the 
wheel dog and the sledge, thus preventing the 
loss of the entire team. 

Hans stopped the starbuck and went to the 


228 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


assistance of the gambler, and together they 
pulled the struggling team back on to the ice. 

When this had been accomplished, Alec 
turned to Hans in utter disgust. 

“ Py gar, you one tarn fool. Why didn’t 
you let me go to hell in the water, togs and 
all? ” He could not understand such an act 
when five thousand dollars was at stake. 

Hans said nothing, but sprang upon his 
sledge and called to the starbuck, and they were 
off again, this time Hans leading. 

Brutally, Alec urged on his water-soaked 
and limping team, who were running, tongues 
out, nearly spent. 

He drove them mercilessly, and once again 
took the lead and held it till the forty-mile sta- 
tion, but here one of his dogs fell in the har- 
ness. Like a tiger the Canuck sprang to the 
disabled dog, cut him out, tied up the harness, 
and they were off again, having lost less than 
two minutes. 


A GREAT RACE 


229 


Halfway between the forty- and the fifty- 
mile stations, or five miles out of Ambia, an- 
other dog fell, kicking in the traces. 

Alec could not cut him out readily while he 
kicked, so he shot him, and again they tore on ; 
but Hans was leading once again. 

Three miles out of Ambia there was a piece 
of very rough ice where many small cakes had 
been ended up in the rapids. 

Hans slowed up and went into it rather care- 
fully, but Alec yelled at his team and drove 
them harder than ever, thinking that the 
“Tutchman” was at last worn out; but both 
w T ere destined to come to grief at almost the 
same instant. 

Alec’s sledge caught in a crevice and pulled 
off one runner, while Hans ran against a hum- 
mock of ice, and that side was crushed over. 

Both hunting-knives were out in a flash, and 
the two men cut the traces which bound their 
teams to the sledge at the same moment, and 


230 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


started to finish the three miles to Ambia on 
foot, one driving his dog-team and the other 
his reindeer. 

Alec was lighter than Hans, and fleeter of 
foot, so try as he would the Norwegian could 
not quite overtake him. 

They ran almost side by side, Alec leading 
by six or eight feet down into the little town, 
while the crowd yelled itself hoarse. 

Antone Dubois was waiting with the huskies, 
who were yelping as eagerly to be off as the 
malamutes had been at Nulato. Alec sprang 
upon the sledge, flung his heavy whip among 
them, and yelled, “ Mush, you tevils, or I kill 
you all,” and they did mush as few teams in 
Alaska were capable of doing. Hans hurriedly 
hitched the starbuck to his extra sledge, which 
he had sent to Ambia for just such an acci- 
dent, and was after the yelping huskies, having 
lost only about a hundred yards. 

Now it was that the real hard work for the 


A GREAT RACE 


231 


starbuck began. Up to this point Hans had 
not urged him. Now it was necessary, for Alec 
had very wisely kept his best team of dogs for 
the return leg of the race, and he drove them 
for every drop of blood in their lean bodies. 

Hans found it difficult for the first ten miles 
to hang upon their flank as he had done with 
the malamutes. 

Alec, who occasionally glanced over his 
shoulder, saw that his opponent was lagging 
behind, sometimes nearly a hundred yards, and 
his spirits rose. He was going to give the 
“ Tutchman ” the beating of his life. “ That 
reindeer was vun tarn fine animal, you bet.” 

At forty miles from Nulato Alec was two 
hundred yards ahead; but the pace was telling 
on his team, which was not as fresh as it 
should have been. 

At thirty miles he was but one hundred yards 
ahead. 

Hans occasionally called to the deer in cheery 


232 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


tones, “ Just a little better, old starbuck,” but 
he never urged him unduly; he was saving him 
for the finish. 

Halfway between twenty miles and ten 
miles from Nulato Alec’s first dog went mad, 
and he began snapping at his team mates and 
biting at himself. 

The gambler sprang from the sledge and shot 
him, cut out the dead dog, mended the harness, 
and rushed his team forward with whip and 
voice, seeking to make up the distance he had 
lost, for Hans was now leading by a hundred 
feet. 

By a magnificent bit of driving Alec regained 
the distance and again took the lead; but his 
whole team were running with tongues out, and 
it was with difficulty that he could make them 
keep the pace. 

Mile after mile they covered in this relative 
position, Alec cursing, throwing his whip into 
the team, and yelling at each individual dog. 


A GREAT RACE 


233 


He was clearly driving them to the very 
limit of endurance. 

One mile from the finishing flag his lead dog 
fell kicking, and could not rise. Again he 
sprang from the sledge, and once more the 
crack of the “ forty-four ” rang out. 

The reindeer passed him and took the lead. 

Hans was now urging the starbuck with word 
of mouth and with gentle slaps of the rein on 
his side. 

But reindeer and dog-teams were traveling 
much slower than when they started. Most of 
the distance they had come at sixteen miles an 
hour, and now they were barely making eight. 

Nearer and nearer they drew to the finishing 
flag, while the entire population of the town 
shouted itself hoarse, as there were many thou- 
sands of dollars besides the ten thousand be- 
tween Alec and Hans on the race. 

Alec cursed and flung his whip constantly 
into his panting team, while Hans coaxed and 


234 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


urged, “ Just a little faster, starbuck; just a 
little f aster/ ’ 

They were perhaps half a mile from the fin- 
ishing flag, the starbuck gradually passing the 
dog-team, spite of the brutal driving of Alec, 
the crowd cheering and groaning as their fa- 
vorite lost or gained, when something happened 
that was not on the programme, an event so 
terrible that none who saw ever forgot it to 
their dying day. 

Alec was well out in the river and Hans was 
nearer the Nulato bank. Another three or four 
minutes and the great race would be over. 

But the great race was never finished on the 
river, for at that moment, without any premo- 
nition or warning, but with a crash as loud as 
the heaviest thunder, and with a shock that 
shook the solid earth in the village so that 
dishes rattled in their places, the ice upon the 
river for half a mile up and down and for the 
entire width fell about six feet into the swift 


A GREAT RACE 


235 


current below, breaking into hundreds of small 
cakes as it fell. With such a mighty weight 
suddenly precipitated into the river, the water 
jetted up like a geyser, in many places to the 
height of fifty feet. Small cakes popped up into 
the air and fell crashing upon larger ones, and 
the whole river seethed and thrashed as 
though swept by a mighty storm. The Yukon 
had frozen over in the autumn when the water 
was much higher than now, and that had caused 
the cave-in. 

All eyes were fastened upon the contestants 
with the dog-team and the reindeer. 

A great fissure yawned beneath the sledge 
of Alec; wider and wider it opened its mighty 
jaws, until the slight sledge slipped between 
two great cakes of ice and the current sucked 
mightily upon it to pull it down. Alec clutched 
at the edges of the ice to keep the sledge from 
sinking. Then there was a recoil as the cata- 
clysm rocked the ice from side to side, and the 


23 6 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


mammoth jaws slowly closed. Alec saw his im- 
pending doom, but too late to do anything to 
save himself. As he felt the great ice jaws close 
upon his sides he threw up his arms with a wild, 
despairing yell which was so full of terror and 
anguish that the watching women covered their 
eyes with their hands and wept. 

Having crushed both the man and the sledge, 
the cakes again recoiled, the jaws opened, and 
the swift current pulled them down under the 
ice. 

Three of the four dogs in the team had also 
been caught between the cakes and, like the 
man, crushed. The leader managed to get his 
forepaws upon a small cake and scramble upon 
it, but his release was only for a second, for 
the current, pulling at the sledge and his team 
mates under the ice, was too much for him. 
Frantically he worked his paws to keep his foot- 
ing on the cake, but the current sucked him 
surely down to doom. First his hind feet 



Alec Clutched at the Edges of the Ice to Keep the Sledge 

From Six king 




A GREAT RACE 


237 

slipped from the cake, and it was no use strug- 
gling more. 

Just as he let go with his forepaws he threw 
up his head and gave a despairing howl, as 
piteous and heartrending as had been the cry 
of the man. 

Meanwhile Hans Peterson was fighting des- 
perately for his life. He had been much more 
fortunate in his position on the river than Alec, 
as he had been close to the shore, within per- 
haps fifty feet. The ice on his side of the river 
had clung to the bank and had cracked about 
ten feet the other side of him towards the middle 
of the river. The shock even then was terrible, 
while the water swirled over the ice three feet 
deep, drenching Hans and threatening to carry 
the sledge under the ice with the recoil. 

But Hans acted like a flash. With a strong 
pull upon the driving-rein he headed the star- 
buck up the steep incline towards the shore, 
while with his knife in the other hand he slit 


238 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


the tug that held him to the sledge, retaining 
the driving-rein for his own safety. 

The incline was so steep that with the water 
surging over it he never could make it by him- 
self, and his only hope was in the starbuck. 

So Hans called upon the old deer with a 
clarion yell that rang out like a trumpet blast 
above the tumult, ‘ 4 Mush, starbuck ; mush. ’ ’ He 
had taught him to go forward at his best speed 
at this word the winter before, in order to show 
him oft before some dog-drivers, and that train- 
ing now stood him in good stead. 

The old reindeer was almost as good a 
climber as a goat, and his hoofs were as sharp 
as any steel shoes. He answered to the call as 
though his life had depended upon it, as it really 
did. He dug his hoofs into the ice like a fury, 
and with short, quick springs, slipping and 
nearly falling, but with his hoofs working away 
madly, while his mighty muscles writhed and 
twisted beneath his coat, he struggled. 


A GREAT RACE 


239 


Once he slipped and nearly lost his footing, 
but in two seconds’ time it was all over, and 
he had hauled Hans up on to the hank to safety. 

The great race was over, and the starbuck 
had not only saved his master’s five thousand 
dollars and won him an additional five thou- 
sand, but he had saved his life as well. 


XI 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 

The week following the great race Hans 
took two Eskimos with him and went up to his 
claim on the middle branch of the Chandler 
River. 

Then there was heard a new sound in the 
little valley, the ring of axes, while they cut 
spruces and built them into a commodious log 
cabin. When this had been finished to Hans’s 
satisfaction, he went back for Olga and little 
Johanna, while the Eskimos were left to work 
the claim. 

Two weeks later the entire family were lo- 
cated in the new home, and it was a pleasant 
and profitable summer that they spent, far 
from civilization or neighbors. 

Johanna used to watch her father and the 
240 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 


241 


other men as they worked, or stroll about the 
valley, which was really quite beautiful in sum- 
mer, although it could be so bleak in winter. 

Most interesting of all the inhabitants of the 
valley to Johanna were a pair of piliated wood- 
peckers, also called “ the cock of the woods,’ ’ 
that had their nest in an old spruce near the 
cabin. She also discovered a brood of ptarmi- 
gan chicks one day, and her delight knew no 
bounds. 

The one thing that worried Olga was their 
plan to spend the winter on the claim, for she 
felt that it would be very dreary, so far from 
other white people. But Hans was anxious to 
work as late as possible and to begin early the 
next spring; to take his family to Nulato and 
then return for them in the spring would use 
up two precious weeks, so they finally agreed 
that all should stay. 

It was surprising how soon the summer went 
and the cold again set in. They had so reveled 


24>2 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


in the sunlight and gladness, and almost be- 
fore they knew it the snowflakes were falling 
again. 

Hans had built his cabin so large that it 
could be divided into two rooms, and they were 
very comfortable ; yet the extreme cold of these 
northern latitudes is hard upon white women, 
and little J ohanna soon began to grow pale and 
thin. She lost her appetite, and her parents 
were much worried about her. 

Two weeks after the first snowstorm, when 
the bitter cold of these north latitudes was be- 
ginning to get in its work, they were visited by 
two belated prospectors who were making their 
way down to the Yukon. 

They spent two days with the Petersons wait- 
ing for favorable weather. 

One of them was a young doctor who had 
been obliged to give up his profession on ac- 
count of poor health and rough it, going back 
to nature for sunlight and ozone. 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 243 


Hans often during the two days would catch 
him watching the little girl narrowly. Finally 
he asked him what was the matter with 
her. 

She was anemic, he said, with a tendency to 
consumption. She must have lots of sunshine, 
and fresh air, and plenty of fresh, juicy meat. 

The fresh air Hans was sure he could supply, 
but at the mention of sunlight and fresh meat 
he shook his head. The sunlight would not 
come until spring, and while they had a large 
supply of provisions for winter fresh meat 
was not on the bill of fare. 

When Hans mentioned this fact to the young 
doctor he laughed. 

“ Meat,” he said; “ I should think you could 
find that readily enough. If you cannot do 
better, kill that fine reindeer that I saw in the 
shed this morning. He would last you all win- 
ter.” 

At this suggestion the face of the little girl 


244 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


went almost as white as the prevailing snow on 
the landscape. 

“ Kill Starbuck, Mr. Doctor? ” she gasped. 

6 1 You can’t mean that. Yon do not know him. 
He is my friend. I love him almost like papa 
and mamma. I would rather die a million 
times than eat the starbuck.” 

She was so troubled with the thought that 
Hans hastened to assure her that the starbuck 
would not he killed. 

The following day the two prospectors took 
their leave, the young doctor not failing to re- 
mind Hans at parting of his prescription for 
plenty of fresh meat. 

After that Johanna’s days were never quite 
happy. She had an anxious look which her par- 
ents could not understand. She never referred 
to the subject of killing the starbuck, but kept 
a sharp lookout for her old friend. 

Every morning when she first got up she 
always inquired for him, and she would slyly 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 245 

steal out to the shed to see him when her folks 
were busy. 

“ Starbuck,” she said to him one day, in a 
burst of confidence, “ I don’t want you to be 
scat; but I am going to tell you, because it 
worries me so. A mean man told my papa one 
day to kill you so I could have meat. But they 
are not going to do it, Starbuck. I won’t let 
them. I’ll take care of you, Starbuck.” 

The old deer bent down his head and sniffed 
the curly pate, while Johanna rubbed his nose 
and told him not to be afraid, for she would 
protect him. 

After the prospectors had gone, Hans took 
down his rifle and went out to hunt. He also 
set snares for ptarmigan and rabbit in all the 
likely places in the valley, so for a while he was 
able to get fresh meat for his little daughter; 
but there came a time when these sources 
failed, and gloom rested upon the log cabin 
in the wilderness. 


246 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


This was when the Arctic winter came down 
upon the land in all its fury — such a winter as 
old miners had not seen since the opening up 
of Alaska to the gold-seekers. 

First snow fell to a great depth, and then 
there was such bitter cold as made the hardy 
trees of even that region cry out for mercy. 

In the dead of night there would often come 
a crack like the report of a heavy rifle close 
to the cabin. Then in the morning Hans would 
find some noble spruce split to the heart by 
the awful cold. 

They were quite warm in their snug log 
cabin, and Hans would not have minded the 
cold but that it drove all the game to cover, 
and scour the woods in every direction thor- 
oughly as he might he could find no game. 
His snares were also futile, for no game was 
abroad. 

Day after day he visited them in vain, al- 
ways setting new ones in hopes that some fool- 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 247 


ish ptarmigan or rabbit might stumble into one. 
He tramped miles in the lonely, forsaken forest, 
but no game could he shoot. 

Each night when he appeared at the cabin 
Olga would ask anxiously what luck he had met 
with, and he always replied with the discourag- 
ing shake of the head. 

Little Johanna noted all these things, and 
her young heart was very heavy. She made 
more visits than before to her friend the star- 
buck, and even conjured him to run away, but 
he took no heed of her warning. 

Olga racked her brain to think up new 
dainty dishes that she might cook for her 
daughter, but the zest soon wore off them all, 
and the little girl grew paler and thinner. 

This could not go on until spring. She would 
surely die before then. Several times Hans 
hinted to Olga in secret of killing the starbuck, 
but she always shook her head. “ That would 
kill her anyway if she knew,” Olga said, “ and 


248 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


we could not keep it from her. You do not 
know how closely she watches him. If he was 
to disappear she would know at once. Wait 
another day, Hans; perhaps something will 
turn up. ’ ’ 

So they waited and hoped, but nothing de- 
sirable came of it. Hans got no game either 
with the rifle or with his snares, and Johanna 
steadily failed. 

Then there came a day when she could not 
rise from her bunk, and the hearts of Hans and 
Olga were very heavy. “ She must have meat 
at once,” Hans announced, with a meaning 
look at his wife, but Olga replied, “ Wait an- 
other day.” 

They waited another day, and still another, 
and Johanna grew steadily weaker. Hans 
would stand for an hour with his hand on the 
latch of the door leading to the shed where the 
reindeer was kept, listening to the low moan- 
ing of his child, but he could not act. Not so 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 249 

much because he could not kill the deer as that 
he feared the results on the child. 

Finally one night when the moaning had been 
more piteous and persistent than usual Hans 
could stand it no longer, so he whispered to 
Olga and she nodded her head in assent. 

Then Hans took down his long hunting-knife 
from where it was stuck in a log and sat by the 
fire for a long time sharpening it, and with 
each motion he hardened his heart. Each time 
the stone passed over the keen blade the fate 
of the starbuck was nearer being sealed. 

Occasionally a great tear streamed down his 
rough cheek, and he would wipe it away slyly. 
He was not ashamed to have Olga see, but he 
did not want to make it hard for her. She was 
weeping silently. 

Who shall guess the thoughts of Hans as he 
sat and silently sharpened the long knife with 
which to butcher the starbuck? His mind would 
not let him rest. He thought of the long, des- 


250 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


perate race of three hundred miles over the 
Norway snows for the lives of the two that he 
most loved in all the world. 

He thought of Little Lightfoot, the fawn, so 
full of capers, as he fed from his mistress’s 
hands in the old days in dear old Norway. 

He thought of the long, terrible trip across 
the frozen tundra when they had suffered such 
hardships for the starving sailors. How 
strong and faithful, and what a companion the 
starbuck had been through it all, and now he 
was about to murder him. 

Then he saw in his mind’s eye the two gaunt, 
half-demented sailors come running over the 
ice, brandishing their harpoons, crying, “ Meat, 
meat, meat ! ’ ’ God ! would he never forget that 
cry, and that was just what his little daughter 
was saying now in her low moaning — “ Meat, 
meat, meat! ” 

Each low moan now resolved itself into that 
dismal refrain, “ Meat, meat, meat! ” 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 


251 


For fifteen minutes longer Hans sharpened, 
with the low cry for meat still ringing in his 
ears, then he got up with a jerk. 

At the move a low sob escaped from Olga. 
“ Never mind, mother ,’ 9 said Hans, crossing to 
her and wringing her hand warmly. “ If the 
starbuck knew, he would be willing. He would 
run till he dropped for us, and why not this? ” 

Hans tiptoed softly out of the room and shut 
the door without any sound. 

He went swiftly to the shed. What he had to 
do must be done quickly while he had the nerve. 

The starbuck thrust out his muzzle towards 
him in greeting as he approached. 4 4 God, no ! 
Not that, Starbuck,” he groaned. “ I would 
rather you would fight me. Fight like the devil ; 
then I can kill you easier.” 

But the starbuck made no such move; in- 
stead he stood meekly waiting, while his mas- 
ter passed his fingers lightly over his ribs on 
the left side, just back of the foreleg. 


252 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


He would find that place just between the 
third and fourth ribs, and then would kill the 
deer at a single thrust. 

At last he found the fatal spot, and steeled 
the muscles of his arm, that they might be 
strong to do this deadly work. He took in a 
deep breath and tightened his grip upon the 
knife. There must be no bungling. 

But at that instant, half a second’s time be- 
fore the fatal plunge of the knife, there came a 
scream, clear and thrilling — a cry full of terror 
and appeal. 

“ Father! Father! Oh, father! Stop! If 
you kill the starbuck I shall die! ” 

Hans dropped the knife as though his 
arm had been suddenly paralyzed, and sank 
to the ground, the strength all gone out of 
him. 

A second later Olga, pale as a sheet, appeared 
at the door. 

“ Hans,” she gasped, “ did you hear that? 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 


258 


It was awful. I know she will be dead when 
we go in to see her.” 

For a few seconds the two stood clasping 
each other ’s hands and hardly daring to 
breathe. They were rather superstitious, and 
feared the worst. 

“ Let us go in,” Hans finally said, and they 
went like two children, still holding on to each 
other’s hands. 

At the door the child called to them. “ Did 
I save the starbuck? ” she gasped. 

Hans and Olga knelt down by the bunk and 
took the thin hands of their child in their own. 

4 1 No, he is not dead,” answered the man in 
shaking tones. “ You saved him, but how did 
you know? ” 

“ I was sleeping,” answered the child in a 
whisper, “ when I dreamed the starbuck was 
in trouble. I thought I was in the shed, and 
there you was, Papa, with that dreadful knife. 
If you had killed the starbuck I should have 


254 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


died. I had a beautiful dream just before I 
had this bad one. 

“ I dreamed you went hunting and killed a 
great moose, which was meat enough for us 
all winter, and I also dreamed that I got well, 
and we were all so happy because I knew then 
there would be no more danger to the star- 
buck.” 

“ I pray God it may come true; one of 
your dreams was true, perhaps the other will 
be.” 

“ I know it will be,” said the child faintly. 
“ Now if you are sure you will never, never try 
to kill him again I will go to sleep. It is awful 
hard work watching and watching to see your 
friend is not killed.” 

“ Go to sleep, my child,” said Olga; “ no 
harm will come to the deer.” 

The following morning, as soon as the dim, 
gray day made it possible to see, the Peterson 
family were astir, for Hans had planned an- 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 255 


other hunting-trip. He had scoured the sur- 
rounding country for twenty miles in every di- 
rection with no success ; but he was greatly im- 
pressed with little Johanna’s dream. She had 
known that he was about to kill the starbuck 
when her body had been in the bunk screened 
from sight of the shed. There was something 
supernatural about it, so perhaps her other 
dream about the killing of game might also be 
true. 

Hans made his preparations for the day’s 
hunt, even buoyantly, so great was his faith. 
When he reached up for his “ thirty-thirty ” 
hunting-rifle he noted the “ forty-five-ninety ” 
Winchester which hung upon pegs above it. 
Why not take the larger-bore gun? Perhaps it 
would change his luck; so he took the Win- 
chester. 

For three hours he tramped through the 
snow-laden, ice-bound spruce forest, following 
the stream upon which his claim was located. 


256 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


As each new vista of country opened up he 
scanned it with eager, hungry eyes, hut it was 
always the same. He saw two or three snow- 
shoe-rabbit tracks and the tracks of a ptarmi- 
gan where it had run about the perimeter of a 
low bush, budding, but that was all. 

There was no sun, of course, but his watch 
told him that it was noon, and he had accom- 
plished nothing. His heart grew heavy in spite 
of him, but there were still three good hours, 
and he would not give up hope. 

Presently he left the valley and went upon 
some higher land which was sparsely sprinkled 
with aspens. How desolate and cold and ut- 
terly lifeless the world seemed ! It would take 
a million years, he thought, for the sun to call 
life to this frozen waste. 

Hans stood looking across the upland, 
through the naked aspens, and, spite of him- 
self, a great heart-sickness came over him. 
Must his child die, after all? He would not 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 257 


dare to kill the starbuck after what had hap- 
pened last night. 

But just at that moment something far 
across the waste caught his eye. It was not 
that he saw any game, but rather something 
queer. It was the bending and swaying of one 
of the aspens. The wind was blowing strongly; 
but wind could not cause this motion. The rest 
of the aspens about this one were only moving 
gently, but the top of this one was writhing and 
swaying. While he still gazed, spellbound and 
entirely at a loss to explain the strange phe- 
nomenon, a moose pushed out from a thick 
clump of bushes at the foot of the tree and 
began slowly bearing the sapling down under 
his foreleg. Finally, when he had got it where 
he wanted it, he began stripping it of small 
twigs, getting his own afternoon lunch. 

As the moose stood he was almost broadside 
to Hans. 

Eagerly the man’s eye measured the distance 


258 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


between him and the moose. It was a good 
three hundred yards. With joy he remembered 
the “ forty-five-ninety ” Winchester in his 
hands. This was the secret of his impulse to 
take the larger gun. 

Should he wait and try to get nearer! It 
was a long shot and the life of his child de- 
pended upon it. At this moment he noted with 
alarm that the wind was directly at his back. 

Even at that great distance the moose might 
wind him any moment and escape. He never 
could creep up on him going down the wind. 
He would risk the shot. 

Very deliberately he raised the rifle. There 
was no chance for a rest. It would have to be 
offhand. 

Hans drew in a deep breath, and, turning 
the wrist of his right hand, which held the fore- 
stock in its palm, he rested his forearm against 
his breast, thus getting a partial rest. He had 
previously elevated the rear sight to three hun- 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 259 


dred yards. Again he drew in a deep breath, 
and took careful aim just behind the shoulder. 
For a second the sight glimmered in the right 
spot ; then he pulled. But this one shot was not 
enough for Hans; he must make sure. He 
snapped the guard down and back with a 
motion like lightning, and before the first bullet 
had found its mark a second was well on its 
way. 

The moose sprang back, let the aspen go up 
with a snap, and without even looking to see 
in what direction his assailant was he trotted 
off rapidly, his head held high. 

Hans ’s heart sank, but he sent two more bul- 
lets after the retreating moose. 

Just as he fired the fifth shot he noted that 
the moose was slowing down in his trot, and 
then, to his great astonishment, he stopped and 
stood stock still, his forelegs apart and his 
head hanging low. This could mean but one 
thing — he was mortally wounded. Hans did 


260 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


not wait to fire more, but started at his best 
pace for the quarry. He had barely covered a 
quarter of the distance between himself and 
the game when the moose sank to his knees 
and rolled over on his side, and Hans knew he 
was his. 

The kill proved to be a fair-sized bull, weigh- 
ing perhaps eight hundred pounds, and in fine 
condition. 

It is safe to say that mere man never worked 
as Hans did for the next two hours. With his 
keen hunting-knife, which he had sharpened 
the night before to slaughter the starbuck, he 
cut strips of steak until he had taken out per- 
haps twenty pounds. This he bound up with 
skin taken from the hide, so that it would carry 
easily. 

He set to work to make as much of the rest 
of the meat as possible safe from the wolves. 
He kept on cutting out the best parts and tying 
them up in bundles with strips of hide. When he 


AGAIN THE CRY FOR MEAT 261 


had gotten perhaps twenty pounds he would 
climb a tree and secure it to a limb ten feet 
from the ground. For nearly two hours he 
worked in this manner, until he estimated that 
he had secured at least two hundred pounds. 
Then he reluctantly shouldered the twenty 
pounds of the best cuts, and started for his log 
cabin as fast as tired legs could carry him. 

That night, for the first time in many 
months, there was the odor of fresh meat in the 
frying-pan. 

Johanna ate ravenously, and her recovery 
began from that night. 

How much the thought that the starbuck was 
safe had to do with it not even she guessed, 
but it was a wonderful tonic. She recovered 
so rapidly that when the first red rim of the 
returning sun showed over the southern horizon 
she was nearly as well as ever, and the pink 
had come back to her skin and the roses to her 
cheeks. 


26£ KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


But the ordeal through which all the family 
had passed had been an awful one, and both 
Hans and Olga vowed they never would spend 
another winter in Alaska. 

Gold and great riches were desirable, but 
health and friends were more so. They would 
winter in the States the next year if they had 
luck, and luck was with them. 


xn 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 

Three people stood on the wharf by the 
swift-running Yukon at Circle City, waiting for 
the down-coming boat. Her advent had been 
announced for some time by a dark cloud of 
smoke that wound heavenward in the blue dis- 
tance. 

It was Fourth of July morning, and a few 
flags floated in the breeze, even in this far-off 
town of Uncle Sam’s domain. It was the 
largest log-cabin town in the world, boasting 
almost enough inhabitants to have gained it a 
city charter in a western State of the Union. 
Just how so much enterprise and hustle could 
have come together here on the Arctic Circle 
was amazing to one not acquainted with this 

remarkable story of gold in the Arctic. 

263 


264 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


There were men and women from all parts 
of the world here in this mining town — pros- 
pectors, capitalists, gamblers, and otherwise ad- 
venturers — all drawn hither by the glittering 
story of wealth to be gained in a few months 
of arduous work by those who could endure 
hardship and had courage to take a gambler’s 
chance. 

Presently the boat, “The North Star,” one 
of the Alaska Commercial Company’s splendid 
craft, came round a bend in the river into full 
sight, coughing, belching smoke and steam, and 
churning Up a white roadway of foam in her 
wake. 

“ Here she comes, Papa,” cried an excited 
treble. “ Isn’t she a great big ship! ” 

She surely was a fine ship for such a lati- 
tude, and her decks were swarming with pas- 
sengers. 

It was a cosmopolitan crowd that waited 
upon the wharf, bound down the river. A few 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 265 


of them, strange to relate, were tourists who 
had found their way up this long, winding river 
in search of scenery and novel excitement. 

Hans and Olga were not further from their 
native Norway than were many another pas- 
senger who took passage down the river from 
Circle City that July morning. 

After leaving Circle City they wound their 
way carefully through the Yukon Flats, as- 
sisted by an Indian pilot, who stood in the how 
and guided the ship merely by the color of the 
water, which was darker and had a different 
look in the channel. Here the river spread out 
into a great lake, perhaps ten miles across, 
and was very shallow everywhere except in the 
channel. 

Once out of this devious winding way, the 
ship forged ahead, and they were off for the 
fifteen hundred-mile run down to St. Michaels, 
where they were to take a boat for Seattle, 
Washington. 


266 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


Fate had been kind to the little family 
of Hans Peterson, and they were bound 
to the States. They intended to purchase 
a ranch in Minnesota, where many Nor- 
wegians lived, and enjoy the fruits of their 
labor. 

True to his promise made to Olga and Jo- 
hanna not to winter again in Alaska, Hans 
had sold his claim for a large price to four 
Englishmen who had come down from Dawson. 
The Petersons were now taking farewell of this 
rugged yet invigorating land that Hans himself 
had grown to love. 

They had come down the Chandler River a 
month before and taken the first boat up the 
Yukon, just for a pleasure-trip, and they were 
now returning. 

As they journeyed down the broad, swift- 
running river in this luxurious boat, the coun- 
try and vegetation were a never-ending source 
of surprise to the Petersons, as they have been 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 267 


to many another traveler who has visited 
Alaska in summertime. 

It was surprising what twenty-two or -three 
hours a day of blazing sunlight could do, even 
in this latitude. 

Flowers, grasses, and weeds had sprung 
up like magic, and they now luxuriated in 
the warm sunlight for the better part of the 
twenty-four hours, as fresh, beautiful, and vig- 
orous as they would have been a thousand 
miles to the south. It was as though Na- 
ture repented her severity in dooming the 
country to so long and awful a winter and 
spread her treasures broadcast over the 
land. 

Large white pines, aspens, and willows 
fringed the river, while wild roses clustered 
about stumps and rocks in rich profusion. To 
the family of Hans, and even to Hans himself, 
it seemed more like Eden than their pitiless 
Alaska— the Alaska they had known in the log 


268 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


cabin upon the middle branch of the Chandler 
River. 

For days they journeyed down this swift- 
running,, wonderful river, with its swollen tribu- 
taries, its chasms, its rapids, its trading-posts, 
and missions, each with a thrilling story of ad- 
venture or hardship — this river of joy and sor- 
row, of sudden wealth or bitter disappoint- 
ment. 

At last Nulato was reached, the town which 
had been more nearly home to the Petersons 
than any other since they left Norway. 

Here a score of friends were on the wharf to 
greet them — the factor of the post, the Carlisle 
Indian teachers from the Mission school, and 
Father Adelbert, all of whom had been good 
friends. 

All had a cheery godspeed and a hearty 
handshake for the fortunate Petersons, who 
were so soon to come into their own. 

Finally all the good-bys had been said, and 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 269 


the wheel of the steamer again began to churn 
up the long ribbon of white foam at her stern, 
and they were leaving behind the little town 
where they had spent many happy though ardu- 
ous months. 

“ Papa, I have been wishing all the way 
down the river that we could see the star- 
buck before we left,” piped Johanna. “ He 
was such a good friend. I never shall 
love another animal like him. He wasn’t 
an animal, was he, Mamma? He was 
folks.” 

Hans led his family to the port side of the 
ship. Olga noted that his face wore a broad 
grin. He and the Eskimo herdsmen of the 
Yukon herd had arranged a little surprise party 
for Olga and Johanna, and it was about to 
come off. 

“ You and mother come over to this side of 
the boat,” said Hans, taking his daughter by 
the hand. “ I shouldn’t wonder a bit if the 


270 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


starbuck would come out on the bluff and say 
good-by to us.” 

“ Oh, oh! ” exclaimed Johanna. “ Wouldn’t 
that be splendid! I have been feeling bad in- 
side all day because we had got to leave him 
behind. ’ ’ 

“ It was the only way,” replied her father 
tenderly. “ The starbuck was born upon the 
tundra in old Norway, and the tundra is his 
home. He loves it, and he loves the cold. If 
we took him with us to the States he might 
die.” 

“ I see him, I see him! ” cried Johanna ex- 
citedly as they rounded a bend in the river. 
“ He has come out to say good-by. Look, 
Papa, look; he has got an American flag in his 
antlers. Does he know it’s just been the Fourth 
of July? ” 

“ Sort of looks so,” replied Hans, laughing 
all over his broad face. “ He is waving the 
flag to us in salute. It is his good-by . 9 ’ 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 271 


Hans himself, who had eyes like an eagle, 
could see a rawhide rope tied to the great 
buck’s antlers, and he knew that the two Eskimo 
herders were lying in the grass at the deer’s 
feet, enjoying the whole affair hugely. 

They had tied the flag on the deer’s antlers 
at Hans’s suggestion. 

“ Lift me up, Papa,” said Johanna. “ I 
want to see him just as long as I can, and the 
boat goes so fast. I should think the boat 
would go slower when we are leaving a friend 
behind. ’ ’ 

Hans lifted his little daughter and stood her 
on the rail, while he held her tight, that she 
might not he afraid. 

“ What a remarkable history that deer has 
had,” said Olga, “ and how he has always been 
mixed up with our fortunes. I never can for- 
get how cute he was as a fawn, when he used 
to feed out of my hands. How I hated to have 
you sell him to Anders Poulsen.” 


272 KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE 


44 I felt like a traitor myself,’ ’ said Hans, 
44 but it was all for the best. If we had not 
sold him we would not have had him here in 
Alaska.” 

4 4 Do you remember, Papa, the saddle you 
made for me and how I used to ride him about 
in Nulato? ” asked Johanna. 44 He was always 
so gentle with me.” 

44 I remember,” replied Hans huskily. 

44 I remember, too, the long, hard trip that 
we took across the tundra to save the starving 
sailors and how I worried all the way for fear 
we might have to kill and eat him. 

44 He seems gentle enough, but he fought like 
a Turk when we were surrounded by wolves on 
the upper Chandler. He has a fighting spirit, 
has the old starbuck.” 

44 Five thousand dollars of the money that 
we are taking out to the States he earned for 
us,” said Olga, 44 by winning the great 


race. 


FAREWELL, OLD STARBUCK 273 

“ That is so,” replied Hans. “ It will help 
to buy our home.” 

“We will name it after him, ‘ Starbuck 
Ranch. ’ Then we will always have something 
to remember him by.” 

“ I shan’t need anything,” whimpered the 
small girl on the rail. “ I shall always pray 
for him every night. He’s getting awful dim, 
Papa. I don’t see why boats go so fast when 
you’re saying good-by to your friends.” 

“ Take a good, hard look,” said Hans; “ we 
are coming to a bend in the river. ’ ’ 

So they all looked eagerly, for the last time, 
at the reindeer, standing erect, with head up, 
his splendid neck and branching antlers clearly 
silhouetted against the gray-green of the 
tundra, and that was the last they ever saw 
of him, for a minute later the boat rounded a 
bend in the river, and the noble old starbuck 
had gone from their lives forever. 

THE END. 














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